Debris | Page 4

to bless and comfort me.
O, in the hush of midnight's hour,?How oft from taunting dreams I start,?To find thee but a fancy flower--?Thou cherished idol of my heart.
SANSON.
TO SANSON
I've a beautiful home, where I live in my dreams,?So joyous and happy--an Eden it seems;?All beautiful things in nature and are?Are blending to rapture the mind and the heart;?No discords to jar, no dissensions arise,?'Tis calm as Italia's ever blue skies,?When kissed by the bright rosy blush of the morn;?And a voice of the spheres on the breezes is borne,?Soft as the murmur of sea-tinted shells,?Sweet as the chiming of far away bells;?And grief cannot enter, nor trouble nor care,?And the proud peerless prince of my soul, he is there.
In my beautiful home from the cold world apart,?He holds me so close to his fast beating heart;?More enchanting his voice than the syren-wrapt song,?O'er the wind-dimpled ocean soft floating along,?As he whispers his love in love's low passioned tone,?Such home, and such lover, no other has known.
REVENITA.
TO REVENITA
O, let us leave this world behind--?Its gains, its loss, its praise, its blame--?Not seeking fame, nor fearing shame,?Some far secluded land we'll find,?And build thy dream-home, you and I,?And let this foolish world go by.
A paradise of love and bliss!?Delicious draughts in Eden bowers,?Of peace, and rest, and quiet hours,?We'll drink, for what we've missed in this.?The shafts of malice we'll defy,?And let this foolish world go by.
SANSON.
TO SANSON
Life of my life, my soul's best part,?I could not live without thee now;?And yet this love must break my heart,
Or break a sacred vow.
Which shall it be? an answer oft?From puzzling doubts I've sought to wake;?Must joy, or misery, hence be mine,
Must heart or promise break?
Alone, Heaven's highest court would prove?A desolated land to me;?Earth's barest, barren desert wild,
A paradise with thee.
REVENITA.
TO REVENITA
Thou hast beamed on my pathway, a vision of light,?To guide and to bless from afar;?To illume with thy smile the dead chill of night,?My star, my bright, beautiful star.
The sun pales before thee, the moon is a blot?On the sky where thine own splendors are;?And dark is the day where thy presence is not,?My star, my bright, beautiful star.
SANSON.
TO SANSON
O love, do not call me a star!?'Tis too cold and bright, and too far?Away from your arms; I would be,?The life drops that flow in your veins,?The pulses that throb in your heart.?My bosom should be the warm sea?Of forgetfulness, tinged with the stains?Of the sunset, when day-dreams depart;?You should drink at its fountain of kisses,?Drink mad of its fathomless deep;
Submerged in an ocean of blisses,?I'd be something to kiss and to keep.?Loving, and tender, and true,?I'd be nearer, oh! nearer to you?Than the glittering meteors are;?Then, love, do not call me a star.
REVENITA.
TO REVENITA
Thou'st made for me an atmosphere of life;?The very air is brighter from thine eyes,?They are so soft and beautiful, and rife?With all we can imagine of the skies.
O woman, where is they resistless power;?I swore the livery of Heaven to grace,?Yet stand, to-day, a sacrilegious tower,?Perjured by the witchery of thy face.
SANSON.
TO SANSON
Then, love, I'll give thee back thy perjured vow;?I would not hold thee with one pleading breath;?It may be best to leave the pathway now,?That can but lead to death.?I'll crush the agonies that burning swell,
And say farewell.
REVENITA.
TO REVENITA
"Farewell?" No, not farewell, I'll worship ever
Thy form divine.?No death's despair, no voice of doom shall sever
My heart from thine.
Thou'st crowned me with they love and bade me wear it,
I kiss the shrine.?I will not give thee up, nay, here I swear it,
That thou art mine.

A desecrated holiness is o'er me,
I've held the Thyrsus cup;?I've dared the thunderbolts of Heaven for thee,
I will not give up.
SANSON.
World, farewell!?And thou pale tape light, by whose fast-dying flame I write these words--the last my hand shall pen--farewell! What is't to die? To be shut in a dungeon's walls and starved to death? She knows, and soon will I. She sought to learn of me, and I to teach to her, the mystery of life. Ha, ha! Who claimed her by the church's law has given us both to learn the mystery of death. What was't I loved? The eyes that thrilled me through and through with their magnetic subtlety? They're there, set on my face; but where's their lifened light? What was't I loved? The mouth whose coral redness I have buried in my own? 'Tis there, shrunk 'gainst two rows of dead pale pearls, and cold and colorless as lip of statue carved of marble. Was it the form whose perfect outline stamped it with divinity? It's there, but 'reft of all its?winsome roundness, and stiffening in the chill of death. It makes me cold to look upon its rigidness. But just this hour the breath went out; was't that I loved? 'Twas this I clasped and kissed.