POETICAL WORK S. POETRY OF THE FIRST PERIOD. HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE. [This and the following poem are, with some alterations, introduced in the play of "The Robbers."] ANDROMACHE. Will Hector leave me for the fatal plain, Who, when thou glid'st amid the dark abodes, HECTOR. Woman and wife beloved-cease thy tears; Troy's bulwark!-fighting for our hearths, to go ANDROMACHE. No more I hear thy martial footsteps fall- Thou go'st where slow Cocytus wanders-where HECTOR. Longing and thought-yea, all I feel and think Hark, the wild swarm is at the walls!-I hear! AMALIA. Fair as an angel from his blessed hall*- Of every fairest youth the fairest he! His kisses feelings rife with paradise! was won! And earth and heaven seemed chaos, as, delighted, Earth-heaven were blent round the beloved one! Now, he is gone! vainly and wearily Groans the full heart, the yearning sorrow flows Gone! and all zest of life, in one long sigh, A FUNERAL FANTASIE. I. Pauses above the death-still wood-the moon ; The clouds descend in rain; Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow, Toward that sad lair the pale procession come Where the grave closes on the night below. II. With dim, deep-sunken eye, Crutched on his staff, who trembles tottering by? As wrung from out the shattered heart, one groan Breaks the deep hush alone! Crushed by the iron fate, he seems to gather All life's last strength to stagger to the bier, Heaven-mild his look, as Maybeams when they fall, And hearken-Do those cold lips murmur 66 Fa The sharp rain, drizzling through that place of Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense, The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow; Body to body rapt-and, charmed thence, Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow. Mighty alike to sway the flow and ebb Of the inanimate matter, or to move The nerves that weave the Arachnèan web Of sentient life-rules all-pervading love! Ev'n in the moral world, embrace and meet Emotions-gladness clasps the extreme of care; And sorrow, at the worst, upon the sweet Breast of young hope, is thawed from its despair. Of sister-kin to melancholy woe, Voluptuous pleasure comes, and happy eyes Delivered of the tears, their children, glow Lustrous as sunbeams-and the darkness flies!* The same great law of sympathy is given The dark account that life incurs with Heaven, 'Tis that our vices are thy wooers Hell! In turn those vices are embraced by shame Destruction marries its dark self to pride, Envy to fortune, when desire most charms, "Tis that her brother Death is by her side, For him she opens those voluptuous arms. The very future to the past but flies Upon the wings of love-as I to thee; When-so I heard the oracle declare When Saturn once shall clasp that bride sublime, Wide-blazing worlds shall light his nuptials there'Tis thus eternity shall wed with time. In those shall be our nuptials! ours to share LAURA-above this world methinks I fly, A lyre-sound from the Paradise afar, A harp-note trembling from some gracions star, And my muse feels the Golden Shepherd-hours, I see the young Loves flutter on the wing- Wild life to forests gave; Thy looks, when there Love's smiles their glad- | So, when to life's unguarded fort I see ness wreathe, Could life itself to lips of marble breathe, Lend rocks a pulse divine; Reading thine eyes-my veriest life but seems TO LAURA. (THE MYSTERY OF REMINISCENce.) Thy gaze draw near and near triumphantly- Therefore my soul doth from its lord depart, Thou too-Ah, there thy gaze upon me dwells, WHO, and what gave to me the wish to woo thee-Yes! with the dear relation still we thrill, Both lives-tho' exiles from the homeward hill- As from the conqueror's unresisted glave, Why from its lord doth thus my soul depart?— MELANCHOLY: TO LAURA. I. LAURA! a sunrise seems to break The rapture whence they flow; Blest youth to whom those tears are given- Twin-bound, both souls, and in the links they bore His best reward those meltings eyes Sigh to be bound once more? yes, I learned in awe, when gazing there, Round us, in waters of delight, forever Claudel Quivered our glancing wings. Weep for the godlike life we lost afar― And therefore came to me the wish to woo thee- And therefore, as before the conqueror's glave, For him new suns are in the skies! II. Thy soul-a crystal river passing, Of charm the laws of nature keep? Brings only cause to weep! III. Holds not Hades its domain Underneath the cloud-capt towers? Springs yon clove-pink's fragrant bloom; From the hollows of a tomb. IV. From the planets thou may'st know X. And dost thou glory so to think? And heaves thy bosom ?-Woe! Has poison in its flow! Wretched, oh, wretched, they who trust But breaks the harp-string with the sound; Soon from existence dragged away, The spirits I raised against myself conspire! And life's faint spark shall, fleeting from the clay, XI. And weep'st thou, Laura ?—be thy tears forbid ; And see the blind eyes loathing turn from all Let me die young!-sweet sinner, dry thy tears! Ev'n as the curtain falls; while still the scene Most thrills the hearts which have its audience |