Ah! no, the agonies that swell

This panting breast, this frenzied brain Might wake my

-'s slumb'ring tear.

Oh heaven is witness I did love,
And heaven does know I love thee still,
Does know the fruitless sick'ning thrill,

When reason's judgment vainly strove
To blot thee from my memory ;
But which might never, never be.
Oh! I appeal to that blest day
When passion's wildest ecstacy
Was coldness to the joys I knew,
When every sorrow sunk away.
Oh! I had never liv'd before,

But now those blisses are no more.

And now I cease to live again,

I do not blame thee love; ah no!
The breast that feels this anguish'd woe
Throbs for thy happiness alone.

Two years of speechless bliss are gone,
I thank thee dearest for the dream.
"Tis night-what faint and distant scream
Comes on the wild and fitful blast?
It moans for pleasures that are past,
It moans for days that are gone by.
Oh! lagging hours how slow you fly!
I see a dark and lengthen'd vale,
The black view closes with the tomb;
But darker is the lowering gloom
That shades the intervening dale.
In visioned slumber for awhile
I seem again to share thy smile,
I seem to hang upon thy tone.
Again you say, "confide in me,

"For I am thine, and thine alone,
And thine must ever, ever be."
But oh awak'ning still anew,
Athwart my enanguish'd senses flew

A fiercer, deadlier agony!

FINIS.

45

The imprint of the Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson is as

follows:

Munday, Printer, Oxford.

STANZA: TREMBLE, KINGS!"1

TREMBLE Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country
Tremble! Your parricidal plan

At length shall meet its destiny
We all are soldiers fit to fight
But if we sink in glory's night

Our mother EARTH will give ye new

The brilliant pathway to pursue

Which leads to DEATH or VICTORY ...

THE TEAR. 2

I.

OH! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,
Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,
In which the warm current of love never freezes,
As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,

Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care, Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise, Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.

II.

Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,
Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,
Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,
Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore
Plants liberty's flag on the slave-peopled shore,
With victory's cry, with the shout of the free,
Let it fly, taintless spirit, to mingle with thee.

III.

For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning,
Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain,
When to others the wished-for arrival of morning

Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain;
But regret is an insult to grieve is in vain :
And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair
Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?

IV.

But still 'twas some spirit of kindness descending
To share in the load of mortality's woe,
Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending
Bade sympathy's tenderest tear-drop to flow.
Not for thee, soft compassion, celestials did know,
But if angels can weep, sure man may repine,
May weep in mute grief o'er thy low-laid shrine.

V.

And did I then say, for the altar of glory,

That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I'd entwine,

Tho' with millions of blood-reeking victims 'twas gory,
Tho' the tears of the widow polluted its shrine,
Tho' around it the orphans, the fatherless pine?
Oh! Fame, all thy glories I'd yield for a tear
To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere.

LOVE.1

WHY is it said thou canst not live
In a youthful breast and fair,
Since thou eternal life canst give,
Canst bloom for ever there?
Since withering pain no power possest,

Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,
Nor time's dread victor, death, confess'd,

Though bathed with his poison dew,
Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom,
Fix'd tranquil, even in the tomb.
And oh when on the blest reviving

The day-star dawns of love,

Each energy of soul surviving

More vivid, soars above,

Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill,

Like June's warm breath, athwart thee fly,

O'er each idea then to steal,

When other passions die?

Felt it in some wild noonday dream,
When sitting by the lonely stream,

1 These verses are from a letter to Hogg, given in his Life of Shelley (Vol. I, p. 366), with the postmark "May 2, 1811." After some ordinary prose matter comes this scrap of rhyme, followed in turn by more prose, and, immediately, by the apo

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