No More Learning

I appeal to that blest day
When passion's wildest ecstasy
Was coldness to the joys I knew, _20
When every sorrow sunk away.
Oh! I had never lived before,
But now those blisses are no more.
And now I cease to live again,
I do not blame thee, love; ah, no! _25
The breast that feels this anguished woe.
Throbs for thy happiness alone.
Two years of speechless bliss are gone,
I thank thee, dearest, for the dream.
'Tis night--what faint and distant scream _30
Comes on the wild and fitful blast?
It moans for pleasures that are past,
It moans for days that are gone by.
Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly!
I see a dark and lengthened vale, _35
The black view closes with the tomb;
But darker is the lowering gloom
That shades the intervening dale.
In visioned slumber for awhile
I seem again to share thy smile, _40
I seem to hang upon thy tone.
Again you say, 'Confide in me,
For I am thine, and thine alone,
And thine must ever, ever be. '
But oh!
awak'ning still anew, _45
Athwart my enanguished senses flew
A fiercer, deadlier agony!

[End of "Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson". ]

***


STANZA FROM A TRANSLATION OF THE MARSEILLAISE HYMN.

[Published by Forman, "Poetical Works of P. B. S. ", 1876; dated 1810. ]

Tremble, Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country,
Tremble! Your parricidal plan
At length shall meet its destiny. . .
We all are soldiers fit to fight, _5
But if we sink in glory's night
Our mother Earth will give ye new
The brilliant pathway to pursue
Which leads to Death or Victory. . .

***


BIGOTRY'S VICTIM.