Poetry Archives

Ye gentlest gales! oh, hither waft,
  On airy undulating sweeps,
Your frequent sighs so passing soft,
  Where he, the youthful Poet, sleeps!
He breathed the purest tenderest sigh,
The sigh of sensibility.

And thou shalt lie, his favourite flower,
  Pale primrose, on his grave reclined;
Sweet emblem of his fleeting hour,
  And of his pure, his spotless mind!
Like thee he sprung in lowly vale;
And felt, like thee, the trying gale.

Nor hence thy pensive eye seclude,
  O thou, the fragrant rosemary,
Where he, “in marble solitude,
  So peaceful and so deep” doth lie!
His harp prophetic sung to thee
In notes of sweetest minstrelsy.

Ye falling dews, Oh! ever leave
  Your crystal drops these flowers to steep:
At earliest morn, at latest eve,
  Oh let them for their poet weep!
For tears bedew’d his gentle eye,
The tears of heavenly sympathy.

Thou western Sun, effuse thy beams;
  for he was wont to pace the glade,
To watch in pale uncertain gleams,
  The crimson-zoned horizon fade—
Thy last, they setting radiance pour,
Where he is set to rise no more.