The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Part 45

But no, 'tis o'er, and--thus we part, Never to meet again--no, never, False woman, what a mind and heart Thy treachery has undone forever.

WOMAN.

Away, away--you're all the same, A smiling, fluttering, jilting throng; And, wise too late, I burn with shame, To think I've been your slave so long.

Slow to be won, and quick to rove, From folly kind, from cunning loath, Too cold for bliss, too weak for love, Yet feigning all that's best in both;

Still panting o'er a crowd to reign,-- More joy it gives to woman's breast To make ten frigid c.o.xcombs vain, Than one true, manly lover blest.

Away, away--your smile's a curse-- Oh! blot me from the race of men, Kind, pitying Heaven, by death or worse, If e'er I love such things again.

TO .......

Come, take thy harp--'tis vain to muse Upon the gathering ills we see; Oh! take thy harp and let me lose All thoughts of ill in hearing thee.

Sing to me, love!--Though death were near, Thy song could make my soul forget-- Nay, nay, in pity, dry that tear, All may be well, be happy yet.

Let me but see that snowy arm Once more upon the dear harp lie, And I will cease to dream of harm, Will smile at fate, while thou art nigh.

Give me that strain of mournful touch We used to love long, long ago, Before our hearts had known as much As now, alas! they bleed to know.

Sweet notes! they tell of former peace, Of all that looked so smiling then, Now vanished, lost--oh, pray thee cease, I cannot bear those sounds again.

Art _thou_, too, wretched? Yes, thou art; I see thy tears flow fast with mine-- Come, come to this devoted heart, 'Tis breaking, but it still is thine!

A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY.

'Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met The venerable man;[1] a healthy bloom Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought That towered upon his brow; and when he spoke 'Twas language sweetened into song--such holy sounds As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear, Prelusive to the harmony of heaven, When death is nigh; and still, as he unclosed[2]

His sacred lips, an odor, all as bland As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers That blossom in Elysium, breathed around, With silent awe we listened, while he told Of the dark veil which many an age had hung O'er Nature's form, till, long explored by man, The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous, And glimpses of that heavenly form shone through:-- Of magic wonders, that were known and taught By him (or Cham or Zoroaster named) Who mused amid the mighty cataclysm, O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore; And gathering round him, in the sacred ark, The mighty secrets of that former globe, Let not the living star of science sink Beneath the waters, which ingulfed a world!-- Of visions, by Calliope revealed To him,[3]who traced upon his typic lyre The diapason of man's mingled frame, And the grand Doric heptachord of heaven.

With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane, Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night, Told to the young and bright-haired visitant Of Carmel's sacred mount.--Then, in a flow Of calmer converse, he beguiled us on Through many a Maze of Garden and of Porch, Through many a system, where the scattered light Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam From the pure sun, which, though refracted all Into a thousand hues, is suns.h.i.+ne still,[4]

And bright through every change!--he spoke of Him, The lone, eternal One, who dwells above, And of the soul's untraceable descent From that high fount of spirit, through the grades Of intellectual being, till it mix With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark; Nor yet even then, though sunk in earthly dross, Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still.

As some bright river, which has rolled along Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold, When poured at length into the dusky deep, Disdains to take at once its briny taint, Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left.

But keeps unchanged awhile the l.u.s.trous tinge, And here the old man ceased--a winged train Of nymphs and genii bore him from our eyes.

The fair illusion fled! and, as I waked, 'Twas clear that my rapt soul had roamed, the while, To that bright realm of dreams, that spirit-world, Which mortals know by its long track of light O'er midnight's sky, and call the Galaxy.[5]

[1] In Plutarch's Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year this supernatural personage appeared to mortals and conversed with them; the rest of his time he pa.s.sed among the Genii and the Nymphs.

[2] The celebrated Ja.n.u.s Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that he heard a strain of music in the air.

[3] Orpheus.--Paulinus, in his "_Hebdomades_, cap. 2, _lib_. iii, has endeavored to show, after the Platonists, that man is a diapason, or octave, made up of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a dispente, which is his body. Those frequent allusions to music, by which the ancient philosophers ill.u.s.trated their sublime theories, must have tended very much to elevate the character of the art, and to enrich it with a.s.sociations of the grandest and most interesting nature.

[4] Lactantius a.s.serts that all the truths of Christianity may be found dispersed through the ancient philosophical sects, and that any one who would collect these scattered fragments of orthodoxy might form a code in no respect differing from that of the Christian.

[5] According to Pythagoras, the people of Dreams are souls collected together in the Galaxy.

TO MRS. .......

To see thee every day that came, And find thee still each day the same; In pleasure's smile or sorrow's tear To me still ever kind and dear;-- To meet thee early, leave thee late, Has been so long my bliss, my fate, That life, without this cheering ray, Which came, like suns.h.i.+ne, every day, And all my pain, my sorrow chased, Is now a lone, a loveless waste.

Where are the chords she used to touch?

The airs, the songs she loved so much?

Those songs are hushed, those chords are still, And so, perhaps, will every thrill Of feeling soon be lulled to rest, Which late I waked in Anna's breast.

Yet, no--the simple notes I played From memory's tablet soon may fade; The songs, which Anna loved to hear, May vanish from her heart and ear; But friends.h.i.+p's voice shall ever find An echo in that gentle mind, Nor memory lose nor time impair The sympathies that tremble there.

TO LADY HEATHCOTE,

ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS.

_"Tunnebridge est a la meme distance de Londres, que Fontainebleau l'est de Paris. Ce qu'il y a de beau et de galant dans l'un et dans l'autre s.e.xe s'y ra.s.semble au terns des eaux. La compagnie,"_ etc.

--See _Memoires de Grammont_, Second Part, chap. iii.

_Tunbridge Wells_.

When Grammont graced these happy springs, And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pantiles, The merriest wight of all the kings That ever ruled these gay, gallant isles;

Like us, by day, they rode, they walked, At eve they did as we may do, And Grammont just like Spencer talked, And lovely Stewart smiled like you.