the Blind?
Cursed with the anguish of a power
To view the fates I may not thrall,
The hovering tempest still must lower--
The horror must befall!

"Boots it the veil to lift, and give
To sight the frowning fates beneath?
For error is the life we live,
And, oh, our knowledge is but death!
Take back the clear and awful mirror,
Shut from mine eyes the blood-red glare
Thy truth is but a gift of terror
When mortal lips declare.

"My blindness give to me once more[18]--
The gay dim senses that rejoice;
The Past's delighted songs are o'er
For lips that speak a Prophet's voice.
To me _the future_ thou hast granted;
I miss _the moment_ from the chain--
The happy Present-Hour enchanted!
Take back thy gift again!

"Never for me the nuptial wreath
The odor-breathing hair shall twine;
My heavy heart is bow'd beneath
The service of thy dreary shrine.
My youth was but by tears corroded,--
My sole familiar is my pain,
Each coming ill my heart foreboded,
And felt it first--in vain!

"How cheer'ly sports the careless mirth--
The life that loves, around I see;
Fair youth to pleasant thoughts give birth--
The heart is only sad to me.
Not for mine eyes the young spring gloweth,
When earth her happy feast-day keeps;
The charm of life who ever knoweth
That looks into the deeps?

"Wrapt in thy bliss, my sister, thine
The heart's inebriate rapture-springs;--
Longing with bridal arms to twine
The bravest of the Grecian kings.
High swells the joyous bosom, seeming
Too narrow for its world of love,
Nor envies, in its heaven of dreaming,
The heaven of gods above!

"I too might know the soft control
Of one the longing heart could choose,
With look which love illumes with soul--
The look that supplicates and woos.
And sweet with him, where love presiding
Prepares our hearth, to go--but, dim,
A Stygian shadow, nightly gliding,
Stalks between me and him!

"Forth from the grim funereal shore,
The Hell-Queen sends her ghastly bands;
Where'er I turn--behind--before--
Dumb in my path--a Spectre stands!
Wherever gayliest, youth assembles--
I see the shades in horror clad,
Amidst Hell's ghastly People trembles
One soul for ever sad!

"I see the steel of Murder gleam--
I see the Murderer's glowing eyes--
To right--to left, one gory stream--