Additional Poetry of Felicia Hemans in the 1840 edition of Songs of the Affections/Lot of Man and Woman Compared by Iphigenia

by Felicia Hemans

For other versions of this work, see Lot of Man and Woman Compared by Iphigenia.

Songs of the Affections, 1840, Page 301

III.

LOT OF MAN AND WOMAN COMPARED BY IPHIGENIA.

 
Man by the battle's hour immortalized
May fall, yet leave his name to living song;
But of forsaken woman's countless tears,
What recks the after-world? the poet's voice
Tells nought of all the slow, sad, weary days,
And long, long nights, through which the lonely soul
Pour'd itself forth, consumed itself away,
In passionate adjurings, vain desires,
And ceaseless weepings for the early lost,
The loved and vanish'd!