Parting Words

Leave me! oh, leave me! Unto all below
Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell;
Thou makest those mortal regions, whence I go,
Too mighty in their loveliness. Farewell,
That I may part in peace!

Leave me!--thy footstep, with its lightest sound,
The very shadow of thy waving hair,
Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,
Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear--
Oh! bid the conflict cease!

I hear thy whisper--and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart;
Thou bid’st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart:
Dear one! this must not be.

The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky--
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit’s gaze!
Thou art all earth to me!

Shut out the sunshine from my dying room,
The jasmine’s breath, the murmur of the bee;
Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom!
They speak of love, of summer, and of thee,
Too much--and death is here!

Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?
Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray
From the dread hour so near!

If I could but draw courage from the light
Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!
--Not now! ’twill not be now!--my aching sight,
Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,
Bearing all strength away!

Leave me!--thou com’st between my heart and Heaven;
I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die!--
Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven?
Return! thy parting wakes mine agony!
Oh, yet awhile delay!