Poetry Archives

Oh! thou most fatal of Pandora’s train,
  Consumption! silent cheater of the eye;
Thou comest not robed in agonizing pain,
  Nor mark’st thy course with Death’s delusive dye,
  But silent and unnoticed thou dost lie;
O’er life’s soft springs thy venom dost diffuse,
  And, while thou givest new lustre to the eye,
While o’er the cheek are spread health’s ruddy hues,
E’en then life’s little rest thy cruel power subdues.

Oft I’ve beheld thee, in the glow of youth,
  Hid ’neath the blushing roses which there bloom’d;
And dropp’d a tear, for then thy cankering tooth
  I knew would never stay, till all consumed,
  In the cold vault of death he were entomb’d.

But oh! what sorrow did I feel, as swift,
  Insidious ravager, I saw thee fly
Through fair Lucina’s breast of whitest snow,
  Preparing swift her passage to the sky.
Though still intelligence beam’d in the glance,
  The liquid lustre of her fine blue eye;
Yet soon did languid listlessness advance,
And soon she calmly sunk in death’s repugnant trance.

Even when her end was swiftly drawing near,
  And dissolution hover’d o’er her head:
Even then so beauteous did her form appear,
  That none who saw her but admiring said,
  Sure so much beauty never could be dead.
Yet the dark lash of her expressive eye
Bent lowly down upon the languid—