Leaves no sweet savour lingering, but a curse:
And ’stead of Love and Reason, palace tenant,
There flits a weak and tremulous loathsomeness!
Suppliant fled Lucretia to the couch:
And all her glory trembled as she sang:
Awake, dead soul of dear Lucretius,
Awake, thy witless fond destroyer prays.
Awake, awake, and quit thy aimless journey
In old oblivion’s purple—misted paths.
Dost thou remember, husband? It was evening:
We wandered shorewards, mid the ocean of air
That glassed the gliding Nereids of the Pole.
Immeasurable moonlight kissed the brow
Of the white sea whose ripples swayed to greet
Our heart’s unnumbered laughter. Strongest sleep
So held the life of earth that dimly we heard
Time’s fatal pulse through the dark reverberated.
Then died thy soul: that night I, murderess, dreamt,
Ah, dolorous dreams of limb—dissolving love.
Lucretius,
Why live I still, protracting hopeless pain?
The chillness of the long Lethean stream
Is more to be commended for my sailings
Than love’s hot eddies.
God, for the draught of death!
What sourer, sweeter vintage could be pressed?
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