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...THE SMALLISH SON by HAYDEN CARRUTH EVENING IN A SUGAR ORCHARD by ROBERT FROST RECOMPENSE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON REVIEW by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE GUARDIAN OF THE RED DISK (SPOKEN BY A CITIZEN OF MALTA - 1300) by EMMA LAZARUS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: TENNESSEE CLAFLIN SHOPE by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |