Songs of the Affections, with Other Poems/Parting Words
PARTING WORDS.
One struggle more, and I am free.
Byron.
Leave me, oh! leave me!—unto all below
Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell;
Thou mak'st those mortal regions, whence I go,
Too mighty in their loveliness—farewell,
That I may part in peace!
Leave me!—thy footstep, with its lightest sound,
The very shadow of thy waving hair,
Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,
Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear—
Oh! bid the conflict cease!
I hear thy whisper—and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart;
Thou bid'st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart;
Dear one! this must not be.
The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky—
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit's gaze!
Thou art all earth to me!
Shut out the sunshine from my dying room,
The jasmine's breath, the murmur of the bee;
Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom!
They speak of love, of summer, and of thee,
Too much—and death is here!
Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?
Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray
From the dread hour so near!
If I could but draw courage from the light
Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!
—Not now! 'twill not be now!—my aching sight
Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,
Bearing all strength away!
Leave me!—thou com'st between my heart and Heaven!
I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die!
—Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven?
—Return! thy parting wakes mine agony!
—Oh, yet awhile delay!