Where the green leaves exclude the summer beam, And softly bend as balmy breezes blow, And where, with liquid lapse, the lucid stream Across the fretted rock is heard to flow, Pensive I lay: when she whom earth conceals, As if still living to my eyes appears, And pitying Heaven her angel form reveals, To say -- "Unhappy Petrarch, dry your tears; Ah! why, sad lover! thus before your time, In grief and sadness should your life decay, And like a blighted flower, your manly prime In vain and hopeless sorrow fade away? Ah! yield not thus to culpable despair, But raise thine eyes to Heaven -- and think I wait thee there." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT PORT ROYAL by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE FLIGHT OF THE WAR-EAGLE by OBADIAH CYRUS AURINGER RAIN ON FALL NIGHTS by MILDRED TELFORD BARNWELL ON THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON by JOHN GARDINER CALKINS BRAINARD |