Elegies; Ancient and Modern. with an Introductory Study of Thehistory of Elegiac Poetry from the Earliest Days Down to the Present Time Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ...But through a perfect gentleness instead. For from the lamp of her meek lowlihead Such an exceeding glory went up hence That it woke wonder in the Eternal Sire, Until a sweet desire Entered Him for that lovely excellence, So that He bade her to Himself aspire: I Counting this weary and most evil place Unworthy of a thing so full of grace. Wonderfully out of the beautiful form Soared the clear spirit waxing glad the while; And is in its first home, there where it is. Who speaks thereof, and feels not the tears warm Upon his face, must have become so vile As to be dead to all sweet sympathies. Out upon him an abject wretch like this May not imagine anything of her, --He needs no bitter tears for his relief. But sighing comes, and grief, And the desire to find no comforter (Save only Death, who makes all sorrows brief), To him who for awhile turns in his thought How she hath been among us and is not With sighs my bosom always laboreth In thinking, as I do continually, Of her for whom my heart now breaks apace; And very often when I think of death, Such a great inward longing comes to me That it will change the colour of my face; And, if the idea settles in its place All my limbs shake as with an ague fit; Till, starting up in wild bewilderment, I do become so shent, That I go forth, lest folk misdoubt of it Afterward, calling with a sore lament AS L ON THE DEATH OF BEATRICE 151 On Beatrice, I ask, ' Canst thou be dead?' And calling on her I am comforted. Weep, pitiful Song of mine, upon thy way To the dames going, and the damozels, For whom and for none else, Thy sisters have made music many a day, Thou that art very sad, and not as they, Go dwell thou with them as a mourner dwells. Vita flHcnv, XXXII., Roaum, tr. Whatever while the thought comes...