As one that strives, being sick, and sick to death, By changing places to preserve a breath, A tedious restless breath, removes, and tries A thousand rooms, a thousand policies, To cozen pain, when he thinks to find ease, At last he finds all change but his disease; So, like a ball with fire and powder fill'd, I restless am, yet live, each minute kill'd, And with that moving torture must retain, With change of all things else, a constant pain. Say I stay with you, presence is to me Naught but a light to show my misery; And partings are as racks to plague love on, The further stretch'd, the more affliction. Go I to Holland, France, or furthest Ind, I change but only countries, not my mind; And though I pass through air and water free, Despair and hopeless fate still follow me. Whilst in the bosom of the waves I reel. My heart I'll liken to the tottering keel, The sea to my own troubled fate, the wind To your disdain, sent from a soul unkind. But when I lift my sad looks to the skies, Then shall I think I see my Celia's eyes; And when a cloud or storm appears between, I shall remember what her frowns have been. Thus, whatsoever course my Fates allow, All things but make me mind my business, you. The good things that I meet, I think streams be From you, the fountain; but when bad I see, How vile and cursed is that thing, think I, That to such goodness is so contrary! My whole life is 'bout you, the centre star, But a perpetual motion circular. I am the dial's hand, still walking round, You are the compass: and I never sound Beyond your circle, neither can I show Aught but what first expressed is in you: That, wheresoever my tears do cause me move, My fate still keeps me bounded with your love; Which, ere it die, or be extinct in me, Time shall stand still, and moist waves flaming be. Yet, being gone, think not on me: I am A thing too wretched for thy thoughts to name: But when I die, and wish all comforts given, I'll think on you, and by you think on heaven. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INSCRIPTION FOR THE ENTRANCE TO A WOOD by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT IN HARBOR by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE BETSY'S BATTLE FLAG by MINNA IRVING MY MOTHER by WILLIAM BELL SCOTT A BALLAD OF LIFE by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE NATIONAL ODE; INDEPENDENCE SQUARE, PHILADELPHIA by BAYARD TAYLOR A RHYMED REVIEW; 'LAUGHING MUSE' (BY ARTHUR GUITERMAN) by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS |