f,
The Parcae, and snake-lock'd Eumenides,
To pity of my measureless despair.
I sang thy beauty, O Eurydice!
I sigh'd my love forth, O Eurydice!
With tears and weary sighs, Eurydice!
And at thy name the pains of Hell grew light;
Ixion's wheel stopp'd in its weary rounds,
The rock of Sisyphus forgot to roll,
And draughts of comfort flow'd o'er Tantalus:--
Then from old Dis's hands the keys slipp'd down,
And words of hope and pity spake he forth.
He promised thee again if I would go,
Never back-looking, from those realms of gloom,
Those realms of gloom where thou wert, best beloved.

How could I leave thee thus, Eurydice?
Without one look, one glance, Eurydice?
And I perchance no more to gaze on thee,
Snared by some fatal falsehood from thy side?
Yet strove I hard; until at length I came
Where Lethe flow'd before me, faint and dim;
Ye gods! how could I cross it from my love,
That might wash out her memory for aye;
That I should live and dream of her no more;
That I should live and love her never more;
That I should sing no more, Eurydice;
That I should leave her in the grip of Hell,
Nor bear her forth e'en on the wings of thought.
And so I turn'd to gaze, Eurydice!
I turn'd to clasp thee, O Eurydice!--
And lo! thy form straightway dissolved away;
Thy beauty in the light dissolved away;
And Hades and all things dissolved away;
Until I found me on thy cold, cold grave,
Amid the grass that I would grew o'er me,
Clasping us close within one narrow home,
Where I no more might wake and find thee gone.--
The earth oped not unto my frantic cries;
The portals closed thee from me evermore--
Else had I melted Hell itself with prayers,
And borne thee back to Earth triumphantly.

I cried, heart-stricken, on Proserpina;
I rent the rocks around with endless prayers;
I told her all the story of our love,
I launch'd my sorrows on her woman's heart;
I sought her through the barren winter-time,
The woful winter-time for Earth and me;
And, "Oh!" I thought, "her soul will soon relent,
And rush in crystal torrents from her eyes,
Till in the joy of sympathetic tears,
She woo my love from Pluto's stony heart."
I waited, and I question'd long the Spring;
I question'd every flower and budding spray,
If thou didst come among them back again;
I conjured each bright blossom, each green leaf,
That, leaving Earth, she bears full-arm'd to Dis,
But backward flingeth ere her glad return,
That every step of glorious liberty,
Fall upo