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For wherever truth and duty
 Link the loving, heart to heart,
Your fair world in all its beauty
 Sees its perfect counterpart.

Grieve not, dearest, that thy lover
 Leads thee with averted face;
Once the Stygian bourne well over,
 How he 'll fly to thy embrace!
But till that dear consummation,
 Let the thought bring mutual cheer,
That in deepest obscuration
 Each to each is ever near.

Lo! already, faintly gleaming,
 Far Avernus dawns to sight!
Down whose dusky caverns streaming
 Glance the golden shafts of light:
As they brighter fall around thee,
 Fainter pleads my hapless vow;
Nay, though thousand oaths had bound me,
 I must see thee, here and now!

Fairest of all fairest faces,
 Oh! the rapture, once, once more,
To behold those dimpled graces
 Lovelier than e'er before!
But, alas, the hopes they waken
 Vanish like a frighted bird,
Ah! so soon to be forsaken
 By a bliss so long deferred!

Back, ye Gorgons, grimly glaring
 Where the rosy vision fled;
All your banded fury daring,
 I again will seek the dead!
Vain, vain boast! for ever vanished
 Is thy dream the loved to free;
By thine own blind passion vanished,
 Justest Fates, too, banish thee.