I PRAY thee let me weep to-night, 'Tis rarely I am weeping; My tears are buried in my heart, Like cave-lock'd fountains sleeping. But oh, to-night, those words of thine Have brought the past before me; And shadows of long-vanish'd years Are passing sadly o'er me. The friends I loved in early youth, The faithless and forgetting, Whom, though they were not worth my love, I cannot help regretting; -- My feelings, once the kind, the warm, But now the hard, the frozen; The errors I've too long pursued, The path I should have chosen; -- The hopes that are like failing lights Around my pathway dying; The consciousness none others rise, Their vacant place supplying; -- The knowledge by experience taught, The useless, the repelling; For what avails to know how false Is all the charmer's telling? I would give worlds, could I believe One half that is profess'd me; Affection! could I think it Thee, When Flattery has caress'd me? I cannot bear to think of this, -- Oh, leave me to my weeping; A few tears for that grave my heart, Where hope in death is sleeping. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DEATH'S JEST-BOOK: DIRGE FOR WOLFRAM by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES MONDAY'S CHILD by MOTHER GOOSE THE VALLEY OF UNREST (2) by EDGAR ALLAN POE THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THE IRISH MOTHER IN THE PENAL DAYS by JOHN BANIM |