EDWARD ROBERT BULWER LYTTON,

EARL OF LYTTON 7^4. A Night in Italy

O WEET are the rosy memories of the lips

^ That first kiss'd ours, albeit they kiss no more :

Sweet is the sight of sunset-sailing ships, Altho' they leave us on a lonely shore r

Sweet are familiar songs, tho' Music dips

Her hollow shell in Thought's forlornest wells : And sweet, tho' sad, the sound of midnight bells

When the oped casement with the night-rain drips.

There is a pleasure which is born of pain :

The grave of all things hath its violet. Else why, thro* days which never come again,

Roams Hope with that strange longing, like Regret ? Why put the posy in the cold dead hand ?

Why plant the rose above the lonely grave?

Why bring the corpse across the salt sea-wave ? Why deem the dead more near in native land ?

Thy name hath been a silence in my life

So long, it falters upon language now, O more to me than sister or than wife

Once . . . and now nothing! It is hard to know That such things have been, and are not ; and yet

Life loiters, keeps a pulse at even measure,

And goes upon its business and its pleasure, And knows not all the depths of its regret. . . .

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