Song (I pray thee let me weep to-night)

I PRAY thee let me weep to-night,
'Tis rarely I am weeping;
My tears are buried in my heart,
Like cave-lock'd fountains sleeping.

But oh, to-night, those words of thine
Have brought the past before me;
And shadows of long-vanish'd years
Are passing sadly o'er me.

The friends I loved in early youth,
The faithless and forgetting,
Whom, though they were not worth ray love,
I cannot help regretting; —

My feelings, once the kind, the warm,
But now the hard, the frozen;
The errors I've too long pursued,
The path I should have chosen; —

The hopes that are like failing lights
Around my pathway dying;
The consciousness none others rise,
Their vacant place supplying; —

The knowledge by experience taught,
The useless, the repelling;
For what avails to know how false
Is all the charmer's telling?

I would give worlds, could I believe
One half that is profess'd me;
Affection! could I think it Thee,
When Flattery has caress'd me?

I cannot bear to think of this, —
Oh, leave me to my weeping;
A few tears for that grave my heart,
Where hope in death is sleeping.