Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,

Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,

'Tis something better not to be.

XVI.
STANZAS.

“ Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!”

1.

And thou art dead, as young and fair

As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,

Too soon return'd to Earth!
Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread

In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,

Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow,

So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I lov'd and long must love

Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell
'Tis Nothing that I lov'd so well.

3.

Yet did I love thee to the last

As fervently as thou,
Who did'st not change through all the past,

And can’st not alter now.
The love where Death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,

Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou can’st not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.

The better days of life were ours;

The worst can be but mine :
The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,

Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;

Nor need I to repine
That all those charms have pass’d away:
I might have watch'd through long decay.

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5.
The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd

Must fall the earliest prey,
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd,

The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,

Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eyė but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.

I know not if I could have borne

To see thy beauties fade; The night that follow'd such a morn

Had worn a deeper shade : Thy day without a cloud hath past, And thou wert lovely to the last ;

Extinguish’d, not decay’d; As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high.

As once I wept, if I could weep,

My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep

One vigil o'er thy bed,
To gaze—how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,

Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.

..8. Yet how much less it were to gain,

Though thou hast left me free, The loveliest things that still remain,

Than thus remember thee!
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity

Returns again to me,
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught, except its living years.

XVII.
STANZAS.

1.

If sometimes in the haunts of men,

Thine image from my breast may fade, The lonely hour presents again

The semblance of thy gentle shade: And now that sad and silent hour

Thus much of thee can still restore, And sorrow unobserv'd may pour

The plaint she dare not speak before.