Medicines may serve the body's pangs to still;
Nought but the spirit fails in strength of will,—
Fails in conception; wherefore fails it so?
A thousand times her image it portrays;
Enchanting now, and now compelled to go,
Now indistinct, now clothed in purest rays!
How could the smallest comfort here be flowing?
The ebb and flood, the coming and the going!
·········
Leave me here now, my life's companions true!
Leave me alone on rock, in moor and heath;
But courage! open lies the world to you,
The glorious heavens above, the earth beneath;
Observe, investigate, with searching eyes,
And nature will disclose her mysteries.
To me is all, I to myself am lost,
Who the immortals' favourite erst was thought;
They, tempting, sent Pandoras to my cost,
So rich in wealth, with danger far more fraught;
They urged me to those lips, with rapture crowned,
Deserted me, and hurled me to the ground.
III. ATONEMENT.
[Composed, when seventy-four years old, for a Polish lady, who excelled in playing on the pianoforte.]
Passion brings reason,—who can pacify
An anguished heart whose loss hath been so great?
Where are the hours that fled so swiftly by?
In vain the fairest thou didst gain from Fate;
Sad is the soul, confused the enterprise;
The glorious world, how on the sense it dies!
