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And Thou art Dead, As Young and Fair

"Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui meminisse!"

  1. 2And thou art dead, as young and fair
  2. 3As aught of mortal birth;
  3. 4And form so soft, and charms so rare,
  4. 5Too soon returned to Earth!
  5. 6Though Earth received them in her bed,
  6. 7And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
  7. 8In carelessness or mirth,
  8. 9There is an eye which could not brook
  9. 10A moment on that grave to look.
  1. 11I will not ask where thou liest low,
  2. 12Nor gaze upon the spot;
  3. 13There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
  4. 14So I behold them not:
  5. 15It is enough for me to prove
  6. 16That what I loved, and long must love,
  7. 17Like common earth can rot;
  8. 18To me there needs no stone to tell,
  9. 19'Tis Nothing that I loved so well
  1. 20Yet did I love thee to the last
  2. 21As fervently as thou,
  3. 22Who didst not change through all the past,
  4. 23And canst not alter now.
  5. 24The love where Death has set his seal,
  6. 25Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
  7. 26Nor falsehood disavow:
  8. 27And, what were worse, thou canst not see
  9. 28Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.
  1. 29The better days of life were ours;
  2. 30The worst can be but mine:
  3. 31The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
  4. 32Shall never more be thine.
  5. 33The silence of that dreamless sleep
  6. 34I envy now too much to weep;
  7. 35Nor need I to repine,
  8. 36That all those charms have passed away
  9. 37I might have watched through long decay.
  1. 38The flower in ripened bloom unmatched
  2. 39Must fall the earliest prey;
  3. 40Though by no hand untimely snatched,
  4. 41The leaves must drop away:
  5. 42And yet it were a greater grief
  6. 43To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
  7. 44Than see it plucked to-day;
  8. 45Since earthly eye but ill can bear
  9. 46To trace the change to foul from fair.
  1. 47I know not if I could have borne
  2. 48To see thy beauties fade;
  3. 49The night that followed such a morn
  4. 50Had worn a deeper shade:
  5. 51Thy day without a cloud hath passed,
  6. 52And thou wert lovely to the last;
  7. 53Extinguished, not decayed;
  8. 54As stars that shoot along the sky
  9. 55Shine brightest as they fall from high.
  1. 56As once I wept, if I could weep,
  2. 57My tears might well be shed,
  3. 58To think I was not near to keep
  4. 59One vigil o'er thy bed;
  5. 60To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
  6. 61To fold thee in a faint embrace,
  7. 62Uphold thy drooping head;
  8. 63And show that love, however vain,
  9. 64Nor thou nor I can feel again.
  1. 65Yet how much less it were to gain,
  2. 66Though thou hast left me free,
  3. 67The loveliest things that still remain,
  4. 68Than thus remember thee!
  5. 69The all of thine that cannot die
  6. 70Through dark and dread Eternity
  7. 71Returns again to me,
  8. 72And more thy buried love endears
  9. 73Than aught, except its living years.