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What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
I stood Among them, but not of them;
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted,—they have torn me, and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
But my soul wanders; I demand it back
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past— For years fleet away with the wings of the dove— The dearest remembrance will still be the last, Our sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love.
In flight I shall be surely wise, Escaping from temptation's snare: I cannot view my Paradise Without the wish of dwelling there.
I cannot lose a world for thee, But would not lose thee for a World.
If rest alone be in the tomb, I would not wish thee here again: But if in worlds more blest than this Thy virtues seek a fitter sphere, Impart some portion of thy bliss, To wean me from mine anguish here.
How tinged by time with Sorrow's hue!
"Aye but to die, and go," alas! Where all have gone, and all must go! To be the nothing that I was Ere born to life and living woe!
'Tis this which breaks the heart thou grievest, Too well thou lov'st—too soon thou leavest.
And our days seem as swift, and our moments more sweet, With thee by my side, than with worlds at our feet.
The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe,
To free the hollow heart from paining— They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
