When deep despondence gathers into shade,
And grief unfeign'd calls fiction to her aid--
Paints through the vista of expected years,
Hours clad with wo and visions dim with tears--
The past and future one large waste of gloom--
Here mem'ry's madness, there oblivion's tomb;
No ear to list, no voice to soothe despair,
And even death is deaf to sorrow's prayer.
Oh! say, sweet minstrel, (for thy sighs I know
Are wont to mingle with the sighs of wo,)
Where shall the hope-deserted pilgrim fly
To live too wretched, and too weak to die?
Perhaps, e'en now, impassion'd and sincere,
The sigh of beauty steals upon his ear--
Soft as the sky-wove theme of viewless lyres,
That soothe his spirit when the saint expires:
And oh! perhaps, ere quite dissolv'd in air,
That sigh may breathe oblivion to despair;
Melt o'er the throbbing string in Myra's lay,
Till wo, enraptur'd, bears herself away.