Poems of Felicia Hemans in Friendship's Offering, 1826/The Last Wish

by Felicia Hemans

THE LAST WISH.

Go to the forest shade;
Seek thou the well-known glade
Where, heavy with sweet dew, the violets lie,
Gleaming through moss-tufts deep,
Like dark eyes filled with sleep,
And bathed in hues of summer's midnight sky.

Bring me their buds, to shed
Around my dying bed,
A breath of May, and of the wood's repose;
For I, in sooth, depart
With a reluctant heart,
That fain would linger where the bright sun glows.

Fain would I stay with thee,—
Alas! this must not be;
Yet bring me still the gifts of happier hours!
Go where the fountain's breast
Catches, in glassy rest,
The dim green light that pours through laurel bowers.

I know how softly bright,
Steeped in that tender light,
The water-lilies tremble there, e'en now;
Go to the pure stream's edge,
And, from its whispering sedge,
Bring me those flowers, to cool my fevered brow.

Then,—as in Hope's young days,—
Track thou the antique maze
Of the rich garden, to its grassy mound;
There is a lone white rose,
Shedding, in sudden snows,
Its faint leaves o'er the emerald turf around!

Well know'st thou that fair tree!
—A murmur of the bee
Dwells, ever, in the honied lime above;
Bring me one pearly flower,
Of all its clustering shower,—
For, on that spot we first revealed our love!

Gather one woodbine bough,
Then, from the lattice low
Of the bowered cottage which I bade thee mark,
When, by the hamlet, last,
Through dim wood-lanes, we passed,
Where dews were glancing to the glow-worm's spark.

Haste! to my pillow bear
Those fragrant things, and fair;—
My hand no more may bind them up at eve;

Yet shall their odour soft
One bright dream round me waft,
Of life, youth, summer,—all that I must leave!

And oh! if thou would'st ask
Wherefore thy steps I task
The grove, the stream, the hamlet-vale to trace;
'Tis that some thought of me
—When I am gone,—may be
The spirit bound to each familiar place.

I bid mine image dwell,
(Oh! break thou not the spell!)
In the deep wood, and by the fountain side!
Thou must not, my beloved!
Rove where we two have roved,
Forgetting her that in her spring-time died!
F. H.