Fugitive Poetry. 1600–1878/The Dream of the Tombstone

The Dream of the Tombstone.

Listen! love of mine, O listen, While thy dewy eyelids glisten,Let me press thy snowy forehead With a lover's holy kiss.'Twas a charm, O gentle maiden, When my heart with grief was laden; Yet I pray that God may never Send a vision like to this,Never plunge my dreaming spirit In so darksome an abyss.

O, methought in this my dreaming That the icy moonlight, gleamingOn my bosom white and naked, Did its ghastliness illume;That my heart no more was beating, And the tide of life retreatingLeft me like a sculptured tablet, Like a cold and marble tomb,Like a column white and solemn In the ghostly graveyard's gloom.

Love of mine, O, press me nearer! Let mine eyes thy love-look mirror,Let me feel thy heart's low beating; Fondly echoing mine own;Give my heart the blest assurance That my dreaming soul's enduranceWas a phantom of the midnight, From the holy morning flown,Let thy murmured blessings tell me Thou art mine, and mine alone,

Coldly streamed the moonbeams o'er me, And a new-made grave before meLay in loneliness and silence, With its withered flowerets spread,And a myrtle-wreath was braided Round the willow shrunk and faded,That with melancholy motion Waved above its grassy bed,Like a solemn priest, at midnight Swinging censers o'er the dead.

Then methought that, fair and beaming, Thou didst come in radiant seemingFrom the shadowy groups of cypress That around the churchyard grew.But another's arm was round thee, And another's love had bound thee,And to him who loved thee truly, Was thy love no longer true,Then I felt my heart was breaking As to me yo nearer drew.

Clasp me closer, loved and dearest, 'Tis a dream that now thou hearest,Yet my heart with fear is trembling, As its memory I recall.Though thine eyes are on me shining, Though thine arms my neck are twining,And thy murmured words of blessing, On my heart like music fall.Yet the memory of that vision Shrouds me like an icy pall.

Thou and he whose arm upheld thee, Thou and he whose love had spelled thee,Stood together in the moonlight That revealed my marble breast,And with lips that faltered never, Thou didst swear to love for ever,Him who stood in pride beside thee, With his arms around thee prest,While beneath, all cold and silent, Lay the one who loved thee best.

Love of mine, this dream of terror, God be thanked, is nought but error,Yet its memory oft hath darkened Like a cloud my sunny heart.For its phantom-thoughts betoken, How that heart, all crushed and broken,Would be like that marble tombstone, Should thy gentle love depart,And the cypress and the myrtle From the grave of hope would start.