On an Ancient Sepulchral Basso Rilievo Representing a Maiden Taking Leave of Her Friends

Where goest thou, and what imperious voice
Calls thee away from love,
Thou maiden fair of face?
Why, lonely wanderer, from thy native place
Dost thou depart before thy days are old?
Say, wilt thou ne'er return? No more rejoice
Whom round thee now thou dost in tears behold?

Thou weepest not, and dauntless is thy brow,
Though sadness on thy features leaves a trace.
If life hath pleasing or unjoyous been,
If dark with gloom or bright with joy the place
To which thou hurriest now,
Is by no sign upon thy features seen.
Alas! I cannot find
Solution of the problem in my mind:
Nor can our race below
With full assurance know
If Heaven to thee doth gentle favour show,
Or unrelenting ire,
Or if thy doom be fortunate or dire.

Death summons thee. The dawning of thy days
Beholds their early close.
The home thy footsteps leave
Shall ne'er again thy beauteous form receive.
On thy fond parents thou no more shalt gaze;
Beneath the earth thy future home is laid,
Where for all time thy dwelling shall be made.
It may be, thou art blest: but on thy doom
Who meditates, must sigh in bitter gloom.

The light ne'er to have seen,
Methinks would be the best. But, being born,
When beauty first begins to reign, a queen,
And the fair form to adorn,
And meets eternal praise,
And many a fervent and adoring gaze;
When Hope her fragrant buds begins to show,
And ere the beauteous land and sky around
Unpitying Truth in darkness doth confound:
To find, like vaporous and ethereal clouds
That in frail shapes on the horizon play,
The future fly, as though unheralded,
The joys of times desired
Beneath the silent tombstone lying dead:
If in this doom the mind
Some happiness can find,
Even sternest heart with pity must be fired.

Thou mother feared and wept
By mortal races from their earliest days,
Nature, thou marvel that I cannot praise,
Who givest life in order to destroy!
If agony be kept
Alive by early and untimely death,
Why on the innocent thy wrath employ?
And if it give relief,
Why of all woes the chief,
Why make the parting so disconsolate
To him who still draws breath,
To him whom Death's eternal realms await?

Unhappy where we gaze,
Unhappy where we turn or where we rest,
Are man's disastrous days!
It pleaseth thee that void
And utterly destroyed
Should be our youthful hope; that seas of woe
Should part our years; to evil only shield
Be Death; and that which we can never shun,
The law stern and supreme,
By thee is given us when our course is run.
Ah me! But after our laborious way
Why is, at least, the goal not fair and gay?
Why her, who doth control
Our future, looming darkly in our soul,
Why her, who is the balm
To these our days ne'er calm,
In sable robes array,
Involve in shadows grey?
Why in our fancy form
The harbour more terrific than the storm?

If this, indeed, be woe,
This death which thou dost keep
Impending o'er us all, whom, without guilt,
Unconscious and unwilling, thou hast doomed
To live; he who is wrapped in death's long sleep,
Should more our envy rouse,
Than he who liveth his beloved to weep.
If, as I firmly think,
Life is but misery
And death a mercy, yet whoever could
Desire, even as he should,
The fatal day of those to him most dear,
To find himself bereaved,
Disconsolate and grieved,
To see away from his deserted home
The cherished figure borne
That did for many years his life adorn?
To utter an eternal fare-thee-well,
Without hope finding birth
To meet again on earth;
Then lonely and abandoned in this world,
Gazing around in wonted time and scene,
To bear in mind the union that hath been?
Ah I tell me, Nature, how hast thou the heart
From the embrace to rend
Of friend, the loving friend,
From brother, brother dear,
The offspring from the sire,
And love from love; and bidding one expire,
Doom the survivor to existence dire?
How could thy ruthless deed
Cause so much sorrow that the living bleed
In heart for love entombed? But Nature's end,
On her mysterious way,
Is not to foster joy, or sorrow to allay.