indeed,
So modest in perfection,
So gently sweet--yet more I need
To soothe my heart's dejection.
To thee alone the truth I'll speak,
That not upon this rock so bleak
Is to be found my darling.

In yon far vale, earth's truest wife
Sits where the brooks run playing,
And still must wear a woeful life
Till I with her am straying.
When a blue floweret by that spot
She plucks, and says--FORGET-ME-NOT,
I feel it here in bondage.

Yes, when two truly love, its might
They own and feel in distance,
So I, within this dungeon's night,
Cling ever to existence.
And when my heart is nigh distraught,
If I but say--FORGET-ME-NOT,
Hope burns again within me!

* * * * *

Such is constant love--the light even of the dungeon! Nor, to the glory
of human nature be it said, is this a fiction. Witness Picciola--witness
those letters, perhaps the most touching that were ever penned, from
poor Camille Desmoulins to his wife, while waiting for the summons to
the guillotine--witness, above all, that fragment signed Queret-Demery,
which could not get beyond the sullen walls of the Bastile until fifty
years after the agonizing request was preferred, when that
torture-chamber of cruelty was razed indignantly to the ground--"If, for
my consolation, Monseigneur would grant me, for the sake of God and the
most blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife! were it
only her name on a card to show that she is yet alive! It were the
sweetest consolation I could receive; and I should for ever bless the
greatness of Monseigneur." Poetry has no such eloquence as this.

But we must not digress from our author. Here are a few lines of the
deepest feeling and truth, and most appropriate in the hours of
wretchedness--

SORROW WITHOUT CONSOLATION.

O, wherefore shouldst thou try
The tears of love to dry?
Nay, let them flow!
For didst thou only know,
How barren and how dead
Seems every thing below,
To those who have not tears enough to shed,
Thou'd'st rather bid them _weep_, and seek their comfort so.

* * * * *

The following stanzas, though rather inferior in merit, may be taken as
a companion to the above. Their structure reminds us of Cowley.

COMFORT IN TEARS.

How is it that thou art so sad
When others are so gay?
Thou hast been weeping--nay, thou hast!
Thine eyes t