Yes, my Lyra, while life in thy lover can dwell-- While remembrance can give that endearing farewell, He will carry this gift through life’s thorn-sprouting maze; ’Twill sublimate rapture--’twill soften despair-- ’Twill lead him from grief, to those bliss-beaming days, When each step was on roses,--for Lyra was there!
Yet, ah, can my lips e’er those hated words tell, “For ever, my Lyra, for ever farewell!”
It cannot be _ever_!--or else with the thought, (With feelings, with throes of such agony fraught,) 50 This heart would be burst in its innermost core;-- Could it beat, and each throb of its beating not be Thine only!--Oh, no, every pulse must be o’er, Ere it once is forgetful of love and of thee. If on earth our fond hopings of passion are riv’n, Yet yonder, oh, gaze!--(where so often before We have pour’d our full sighs) on yon balm-breathing heav’n, There bliss will receive us--there grief be no more; Love will pour round our heads his bright halo divine, Sublim’d to a loftier, mellower glow, 60 All celestial, all warm, like the Magi’s pure shrine, Such as Seraphs can feel--such as heav’n can bestow.
As Cupid was roving one morning, he found A Casket emblazon’d in diamond and gold; The gems of the ocean embrac’d it around, And the handmaids of Venus had sculptured its mould.
“How transcendent must be the interior store “Of so bright an exterior,” the mirth-lover cries, As he hastens, in rapture, its depths to explore, With joy in his dimples, and hope in his eyes.
But, I would ye had seen how he alter’d his air, How he rag’d!--how to earth the gay bauble he cast, 10 When the richness of splendour that promis’d so fair, Was empty of aught--save the æther that past.
Thus the beaming of beauty may dazzle the glance, Though void of the stores that beneath them should be; But when the gay casket is open’d--the trance Of hopefulness fades like the foam of the sea.
But, in thee, Queen of Loveliness, wond’ring we find, Not merely the time-searing bloom of the skin, But the grace of the form, and the wealth of the mind, The Casket of Beauty, the treasure within. 20
“It timor, et major Martis jam apparet imago.” _Virgil._
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