LIKE Summer-birds, when Summer-hours are fled: Like Summer-skies when Autumn-clouds are nigh: So from my heart did Hope, the watcher, fly, When in thy arms my darling girl lay dead. O fatal bolt! and all too surely sped: Yet sadder far when in her love-lit eye I saw the smile of recognition die, And felt the death-damp on her fair young head. If Love renewed have ever safe return To its far bourne, what matters it which way Our scarce-fledged hopes and blighted joys have fled? Or why is it that we cannot discern This last great truth, that our best treasures lie Beyond the silent barriers of the dead?
CREAK, ye black forests! and ye mournful forms That flit like hooded monks across the bare And desolate wilderness, urge through the air Your cloudy legions, O ye gloomy storms! Dark ministers of Night! I hear the roll Of rising winds, and in the lonely vale The melancholy Autumn breathes her wail, Yet pleasant is her sadness to my soul. See! where the Old Year bears her in his arms: The pale CORDELIA and the trembling LEAR: Will he not strew with heather her sad bier, And keep her safe from Winter's rude alarms? 'Vex not his ghost!' his life will soon be o'er, The 'sweet, low voice' he loved he hears no more.
OH! when shall love to THEE be my best guide, REDEEMER, SAVIOUR! ever blessed LORD! By all the powers in earth and heaven adored? When flowed the dear blood from THY wounded side-- By heaven forsaken and by man denied-- Why were its crimson streams so freely poured, If man by love was not to be restored? O mighty theme! that doth debase my pride, And pour contempt on all the things of earth: If angels are not faultless in THY sight, How much less we who travail from our birth, Walking apart from Love and its clear light? Yet not for them, but us, was HE once slain, That we, redeemed from sin, might live again.
MOURN, mourn, voice of the wilderness! For HIM who shed HIS precious blood for me: JESU REDEMPTOR! LAMB OF CALVARY! The heir of glory, anguish and distress; Oh! how shall mortal tongue the love express With which THOU didst so love us, as to be Our sacrifice upon the accursed tree, Bearing the burden of our wickedness. O ye wild winds! and wilder blasts that wail Amid the ebon darkness, have ye known Man's dark iniquity that thus ye moan In hollow accents through the lonely vale? Alas! my soul, thy sins slew GOD'S dear SON: _Kyrie eleeson! Christe eleeson!_