To Edward Williams

The serpent is shut out from Paradise.

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more

In which its heart-cure lies:

The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower

Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs

Fled in the April hour.

I too must seldom seek again

Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

Of hatred I am proud,--with scorn content;

Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown

Itself indifferent;

But, not to speak of love, pity alone

Can break a spirit already more than bent.

The miserable one

Turns the mind's poison into food,--

Its medicine is tears,--its evil good.

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,

Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only fly

Your looks, because they stir

Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die:

The very comfort that they minister

I scarce can bear, yet I,

So deeply is the arrow gone,

Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.

When I return to my cold home, you ask

Why I am not as I have ever been.

YOU spoil me for the task

Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene,--

Of wearing on my brow the idle mask

Of author, great or mean,

In the world's carnival. I sought

Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.

Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot

With various flowers, and every one still said,

'She loves me--loves me not.'

And if this meant a vision long since fled--

If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought--

If it meant,--but I dread

To speak what you may know too well:

Still there was truth in the sad oracle.

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;

No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,

When it no more would roam;

The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast

Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,

And thus at length find rest:

Doubtless there is a place of peace

Where MY weak heart and all its throbs will cease.

I asked her, yesterday, if she believed

That I had resolution. One who HAD

Would ne'er have thus relieved

His heart with words,--but what his judgement bade

Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.

These verses are too sad

To send to you, but that I know,

Happy yourself, you feel another's woe.