⁠Fair forms may meet my cheerless eye,
They'll only hover o'er the ground
⁠Where fairer forms in darkness lie;
And voices tuned to music's thrill,
⁠And laughter light as marriage strain,
Will only wake a ghostly chill,
⁠As if the buried spoke again.
All—all is over, friend or lover
⁠Cannot awaken gladness here;
Though sweep the strings their music over,
⁠No sound will rouse the stirless air.
I am dying away in dull decay,
⁠I feel and know the sands are down,
And evening's latest, lingering ray
⁠And last from my wild heaven is flown.
Not now I speak of things whose forms
⁠Are hid by intervening years,
Not now I fear departed storms
⁠For bygone griefs and dried-up tears.
I cannot weep as once I wept
⁠Over my western beauty's grave,
Nor wake the word that long has slept
⁠By Gambier's towers and trees and wave.
I am speaking of a later stroke,
⁠A death the dream of yesterday;
I am thinking of my latest shock,