Poems (Cary)/Despair

For works with similar titles, see Despair.
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DESPAIR.
Come, most melancholy maid,From thy tent of woful shade,And with hemlock, sere and brown,Keep the struggling daylight down.From thy pale unsmiling browWind the heavy tresses now,And in whispers sad and lowI will tell thee all my wo.
The path watched and guarded mostBy an evil star is crossed,And a dear one lies to daySick, in prison, far away—Naked, famished, suffering wrong;Dreamed I of him all night long,And each dreary wind o'erblownSeemed an echo of his moan.
When he left me, long ago,Brown locks, touched of summer's glow,Beautified his boyish brow—Thinned and faded are they now. ​Seeing clouds like oxen strayThrough the azure fields all day,And the lengthening sunbeams lieLike Bright furrows of the sky,Underneath an oaken roofWe were sitting, sorrow-proof—Cheating I with tales the hours,Heaping he my lap with flowers.
As yon elm, the ivied one,Came between us and the sun,And the lambs went toward the fold,I remember that I told,How the robin and the wren,Friendless and unburied menCover with the leaves of flowersFrom the twilight's chilly hours.
Now along the level snowGlistening the frost specks glow,And the trees stand high and bare,Shivering in the bitter air.—Come, oh melancholy maid,From thy tent of woful shade,That in whispers, sad and low,I may tell thee all my wo.
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