INTRODUCTION. ROMANCE, who loves to nod and sing, With drowsy head and folded wing, Among the green leaves as they shake Far down within some shadowy lake, To me a painted paroquet Hath been-a most familiar bird Taught me my alphabet to say- Succeeding years, too wild for song, Where, tho' the garish lights that fly Lay bare, thro' vistas thunder-riven, The blackness of the general Heaven, For being an idle boy lang syne, His pleasures always turn'd to pain His naïveté to wild desire His wit to love-his wine to fire And so, being young and dipt in folly, I fell in love with melancholy, And used to throw my earthly rest And quiet all away in jest— I could not love except where Death Was mingling his with Beauty's breath Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny O, then the eternal Condor years My heart half fear'd to be a crime But now my soul hath too much roomGone are the glory and the gloomThe black hath mellow'd into gray, And all the fires are fading away. My draught of passion hath been deepI revell'd, and I now would sleep And after-drunkenness of soul Succeeds the glories of the bowl- To dream my very life away. But dreams of those who dream as I, Yet should I swear I moan alone, THE DOOMED CITY. Lo! Death hath reared himself a throne In a strange city, all alone, Far down within the dim West And the good, and the bad, and the worst, and the best, Heaven gave to their eternal rest. There shrines, and palaces, and towers Are not like anything of ours— O! no -O! no-ours never loom To heaven with that ungodly gloom! Time-eaten towers that tremble not! Around, by lifting winds forgot, |