To Edward Williams
The serpent is shut out from Paradise.The wounded deer must seek the herb no moreIn which its heart-cure lies:The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bowerLike that from which its mate with feigned sighsFled in the April hour.I too must seldom seek againNear happy friends a mitigated pain.
Of hatred I am proud,--with scorn content;Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grownItself indifferent;But, not to speak of love, pity aloneCan break a spirit already more than bent.The miserable oneTurns the mind's poison into food,--Its medicine is tears,--its evil good.
Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only flyYour looks, because they stirGriefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die:The very comfort that they ministerI scarce can bear, yet I,So deeply is the arrow gone,Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.
When I return to my cold home, you askWhy I am not as I have ever been.YOU spoil me for the taskOf acting a forced part in life's dull scene,--Of wearing on my brow the idle maskOf author, great or mean,In the world's carnival. I soughtPeace thus, and but in you I found it not.
Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lotWith various flowers, and every one still said,'She loves me--loves me not.'And if this meant a vision long since fled--If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought--If it meant,--but I dreadTo speak what you may know too well:Still there was truth in the sad oracle.
The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,When it no more would roam;The sleepless billows on the ocean's breastBreak like a bursting heart, and die in foam,And thus at length find rest:Doubtless there is a place of peaceWhere MY weak heart and all its throbs will cease.
I asked her, yesterday, if she believedThat I had resolution. One who HADWould ne'er have thus relievedHis heart with words,--but what his judgement badeWould do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.These verses are too sadTo send to you, but that I know,Happy yourself, you feel another's woe.
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