Elegies
Ah, no; for in full royalty arrayed
The perfect orb through ether yet shall float;
But neither light nor colour comes to thee,
Faint outline of a life that shall not be!
On that blank page, the student, Fancy, reads
The unwrit story of what should have been,
Sees, mournful paradox, the never seen,
And knows what was not. Yet the grief which needs,
For life's support, a faith and not a dream,
Holds that the spirit in its sigh supreme
With sudden flame shall interpenetrate
Some form unearthly in some unknown state,
A beauteous mystery of meeting bliss
Reserving for the souls that weep and wait.
But vainly towards that state we strain from this;
The earthly heart, the face, the self we miss,
'Tis that which was we fain would re-create.
We talk in earth's old language to our lost,
With our own sighs revivify its ghost;
The form Love meets advancing through the gloom,
Is but the reflex of her own desire,
Flashed on the glass, as in a darkening room
We meet ourselves.—Love once within the tomb,
Shall not that reflex of herself expire?
Can any form our thought may fashion here
The perfect orb through ether yet shall float;
But neither light nor colour comes to thee,
Faint outline of a life that shall not be!
On that blank page, the student, Fancy, reads
The unwrit story of what should have been,
Sees, mournful paradox, the never seen,
And knows what was not. Yet the grief which needs,
For life's support, a faith and not a dream,
Holds that the spirit in its sigh supreme
With sudden flame shall interpenetrate
Some form unearthly in some unknown state,
A beauteous mystery of meeting bliss
Reserving for the souls that weep and wait.
But vainly towards that state we strain from this;
The earthly heart, the face, the self we miss,
'Tis that which was we fain would re-create.
We talk in earth's old language to our lost,
With our own sighs revivify its ghost;
The form Love meets advancing through the gloom,
Is but the reflex of her own desire,
Flashed on the glass, as in a darkening room
We meet ourselves.—Love once within the tomb,
Shall not that reflex of herself expire?
Can any form our thought may fashion here
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