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 horn.

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Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.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.