Felicia Hemans

“ THE VAUDOIS WIFE.* [1]
"Clasp me a little longer, on the brink
Of fate! while I can feel thy dear caress;
And when this heart hath ceased to beat—Oh! think,
And let it mitigate thy woe's excess,
That Thou hast been to me all tenderness,
And friend to more than human Friendship just.
Oh! by that retrospect of Happiness,
And by the Hopes of an immortal trust,
God shall assuage thy pangs—when I am laid in dust." ”

“ And dreams, in their developement, have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by. ”

“ Familiar forms of the world's to-day.
Thou art like the depths where the seas have birth,
Rich with the wealth that is lost from earth—
All the blighted flowers of our days gone by,
And the buried gems in thy bosom lie. ”