EUTHANASIA. WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring Wave gently o'er my dying bed! No band of friends or heirs be there, But silent let me sink to earth, With no officious mourners near: I would not mar one hour of mirth, Nor startle friendship with a fear. Yet Love, if Love in such an hour In her who lives and him who dies. 'Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last Thy features still serene to see: Forgetful of its struggles past, E'en Pain itself should smile on thee. But vain the wish-for Beauty still Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; And woman's tears, produced at will, Deceive in life, unman in death. Then lonely be my latest hour, For thousands Death hath ceased to lower, Ay, 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! Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, STANZAS. ["AND THOU ART DEAD," &c.] "Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!" AND thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not: It is enough for me to prove That what I loved, and long must love, To me there needs no stone to tell, Yet did I love thee to the last Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow : And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep; Nor need I to repine That all those charms have pass'd away; I might have watch'd through long decay. The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd Must fall the earliest prey; Though by no hand untimely snatch'd, And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd, As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high. As once I wept, if I could weep, And show that love, however vain, Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears February, 1812. STANZAS. ["IF SOMETIMES," &c.] If sometimes in the haunts of men The semblance of thy gentle shade: And sorrow unobserved may pour Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile I waste one thought I owe to thee, I would not fools should overhear |