Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/290
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
272
THE DREAM OF THE TOMBSTONE.
Yet I pray that God may never
Send a vision like to this,
Never plunge my dreaming spirit
In so darksome an abyss.
Send a vision like to this,
Never plunge my dreaming spirit
In so darksome an abyss.
O, methought in this my dreaming
That the icy moonlight, gleaming
On my bosom white and naked,
Did its ghastliness illume;
That my heart no more was beating,
And the tide of life retreating
Left me like a sculptured tablet,
Like a cold and marble tomb,
Like a column white and solemn
In the ghostly graveyard's gloom.
That the icy moonlight, gleaming
On my bosom white and naked,
Did its ghastliness illume;
That my heart no more was beating,
And the tide of life retreating
Left me like a sculptured tablet,
Like a cold and marble tomb,
Like a column white and solemn
In the ghostly graveyard's gloom.
Love of mine, O, press me nearer!
Let mine eyes thy love-look mirror,
Let me feel thy heart's low beating;
Fondly echoing mine own;
Give my heart the blest assurance
That my dreaming soul's endurance
Was a phantom of the midnight,
From the holy morning flown,
Let thy murmured blessings tell me
Thou art mine, and mine alone,
Let mine eyes thy love-look mirror,
Let me feel thy heart's low beating;
Fondly echoing mine own;
Give my heart the blest assurance
That my dreaming soul's endurance
Was a phantom of the midnight,
From the holy morning flown,
Let thy murmured blessings tell me
Thou art mine, and mine alone,
Coldly streamed the moonbeams o'er me,
And a new-made grave before me
Lay in loneliness and silence,
With its withered flowerets spread,
And a myrtle-wreath was braided
Round the willow shrunk and faded,
That with melancholy motion
Waved above its grassy bed,
Like a solemn priest, at midnight
Swinging censers o'er the dead.
And a new-made grave before me
Lay in loneliness and silence,
With its withered flowerets spread,
And a myrtle-wreath was braided
Round the willow shrunk and faded,
That with melancholy motion
Waved above its grassy bed,
Like a solemn priest, at midnight
Swinging censers o'er the dead.
Then methought that, fair and beaming,
Thou didst come in radiant seeming
From the shadowy groups of cypress
That around the churchyard grew.
But another's arm was round thee,
And another's love had bound thee,
And to him who loved thee truly,
Was thy love no longer true,
Then I felt my heart was breaking
As to me yo nearer drew.
Thou didst come in radiant seeming
From the shadowy groups of cypress
That around the churchyard grew.
But another's arm was round thee,
And another's love had bound thee,
And to him who loved thee truly,
Was thy love no longer true,
Then I felt my heart was breaking
As to me yo nearer drew.