George Darley

William Sidney Walker

1795-1846

639.

TOO solemn for day, too sweet for night,
Come not in darkness, come not in light;
But come in some twilight interim,
When the gloom is soft, and the light is dim.

1795-1846

640.

Song

SWEET in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,
Lull’d by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute ’mid the lonely air.

Down from the high cliffs the rivulet is teeming
To wind round the willow banks that lure him from above:
O that in tears, from my rocky prison streaming,
I too could glide to the bower of my love!

Ah! where the woodbines with sleepy arms have wound her,
Opes she her eyelids at the dream of my lay,
Listening, like the dove, while the fountains echo round her,
To her lost mate’s call in the forests far away.

Come then, my bird! For the peace thou ever bearest,
Still Heaven’s messenger of comfort to me—
Come—this fond bosom, O faithfullest and fairest,
Bleeds with its death-wound, its wound of love for thee!

641.

To Helene

On a Gift-ring carelessly lost

I SENT a ring—a little band
Of emerald and ruby stone,
And bade it, sparkling on thy hand,
Tell thee sweet tales of one
Whose constant memory
Was full of loveliness, and thee.

A shell was graven on its gold,—
’Twas Cupid fix’d without his wings—
To Helene once it would have told
More than was ever told by rings:
But now all’s past and gone,
Her love is buried with that stone.

Thou shalt not see the tears that start
From eyes by thoughts like these beguiled;
Thou shalt not know the beating heart,
Ever a victim and a child:
Yet Helene, love, believe
The heart that never could deceive.

I’ll hear thy voice of melody
In the sweet whispers of the air;
I’ll see the brightness of thine eye
In the blue evening’s dewy star;
In crystal streams thy purity;
And look on Heaven to look on thee.

642.

The Fallen Star

A STAR is gone! a star is gone!
There is a blank in Heaven;
One of the cherub choir has done
His airy course this even.

He sat upon the orb of fire
That hung for ages there,
And lent his music to the choir
That haunts the nightly air.

But when his thousand years are pass’d,
With a cherubic sigh
He vanish’d with his car at last,
For even cherubs die!

Hear how his angel-brothers mourn—
The minstrels of the spheres—
Each chiming sadly in his turn
And dropping splendid tears.

The planetary sisters all
Join in the fatal song,
And weep this hapless brother’s fall,
Who sang with them so long.

But deepest of the choral band
The Lunar Spirit sings,
And with a bass-according hand
Sweeps all her sullen strings.

From the deep chambers of the dome
Where sleepless Uriel lies,
His rude harmonic thunders come
Mingled with mighty sighs.

The thousand car-borne cherubim,
The wandering eleven,
All join to chant the dirge of him
Who fell just now from Heaven.