Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LINES by CATHERINE ANNE WARFIELD

First Line: LAY THEM, LAY THEM IN THEIR GRAVES
Last Line: WAS WAXING FAINT AND COLD.
"You must make
That heart a tomb, and in it bury deep
Its young and beautiful feelings."
BARRY CORNWALL

LAY them, lay them in their graves,
Those feelings, deep and fine;
Henceforth their marble tomb shall be
The heart that was their shrine.
Bury them with all the dreams
Of those departed years,
When joy was all too bright for smiles!
And grief too deep for tears!

Close within that stony vault,
Which never more shall ope,
The bitterness of memory,
The feverishness of hope,
The yearnings deep for sympathy,
That deep within thee dwell,
The love that finds no answering flame,
And sickens in its cell.

Spread, O spread above that tomb
A pall of purple pride,
To veil the darkness and the gloom
That 'neath its folds abide.
Bear thee gaily in the dance,
And proudly in the hall;
I charge thee, let no eye behold
What moulders 'neath that pall.

It is thus that I have done,
For such hath been my doom;
My heart was once a fiery shrine,
And now it is -- a tomb!
My heart was once a storm-swept sea,
And now it is that lake,
O'er whose dead surface tempests rush,
Nor bid its waters wake.

Yet the ghosts of those dead thoughts,
Those buried hopes and fears,
They rise at times across the soul,
Recalling vanish'd years:
They float in dim and pale array,
Those phantoms of the past;
They freeze my blood -- they chill my brain,
As with an Iceland blast.

Oh! the spectres of the soul,
How fearfully they rise;
Each looking from its fleecy shroud
With cold, clear spirit eyes.
How chill a print their icy feet
Leave on the burning brain;
How bleak a shadow do they cast.
That dim and awful train.

Back to your cells, ye fleeting things,
I do command ye, back!
Obey the sceptre of despair,
Retrace your ghostly track.
Back to your tomb where ye were pent,
Like the frail nuns of old,
Ere yet the grief that was your life
Was waxing faint and cold.



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