Читать книгу Journal of a Residence in America - Fanny Kemble - Страница 19

"The maiden,

With white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the moon,"

stood, with her silver lamp in her hand, and her pale misty robes casting their wan lustre faintly around her. Oh me, how glorious it was! how sad, how very very sad I was!

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Dear, yet forbidden thoughts, that from my soul,

While shines the weary sun, with stern control

I drive away; why, when my spirits lie

Shrouded in the cold sleep of misery,

Do ye return, to mock me with false dreaming,

Where love, and all life's happiness is beaming?

Oh visions fair! that one by one have gone

Down, 'neath the dark horizon of my days,

Let not your pale reflection linger on

In the bleak sky, where live no more your rays.

Night! silent nurse, that with thy solemn eyes

Hang'st o'er the rocking cradle of the world,

Oh! be thou darker to my dreaming eyes,

Nor, in my slumbers, be the past unfurl'd.

Haunt me no more with whisperings from the dead.

The dead in heart, the changed, the withered:

Bring me no more sweet blossoms from my spring,

Which round my soul their early fragrance fling,

And, when the morning, with chill icy start,

Wakes me, hang blighted round my aching heart:

Oh night, and slumber, be ye visionless,

Dark as the grave, deep as forgetfulness!

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Night, thou shalt nurse me, but be sure, good nurse,

While sitting by my bed, that thou art silent;

I will not let thee sing me to my slumbers

With the sweet lullabies of former times,

Nor tell me tales, as other gossips wont,

Of the strange fairy days, that are all gone.