XV.

EUTHANASIA.

1.

WHEN Time, or soon or late, shall bring The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, Oblivion! may thy languid wing

Wave gently o'er my dying bed!

2.

No band of friends or heirs be there, To weep, or wish, the coming blow : No maiden, with dishevell'd hair,

To feel, or feign, decorous woe.

3.

But silent let me sink to Earth,

With no officious mourners near: I would not mar one hour of mirth, Nor startle friendship with a fear.

Yet Love, if Love in such an hour Could nobly check its useless sighs, Might then exert its latest power

In her who lives and him who dies.

5.

"Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last Thy features still serene to see: Forgetful of its struggles past,

E'en Pain itself should smile on thee.

6.

But vain the wish-for Beauty still

Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath: And woman's tears, produc'd at will,

Deceive in life, unman in death.

7.

Then lonely be my latest hour,

Without regret, without a groan!

For thousands Death hath ceas'd to lower, And pain been transient or unknown.

8.

"Ay, but to die, and go,” alas!

Where all have gone, and all must go!

To be the nothing that I was

Ere born to life and living woe!

9.

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.

21.

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 canʼst not see

Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.