Life! I know not what thou art,
   But know that thou and I must part;
   And when, or how, or where we met,
   I own to me’s a secret yet.
   But this I know, when thou art fled,
   Where’er they lay these limbs, this head,
   No clod so valueless shall be,
   As all that then remains of me.
   O whither, whither dost thou fly,
   Where bend unseen thy trackless course,
      And in this strange divorce,
Ah tell where I must seek this compound I?

To the vast ocean of empyreal flame,
      From whence thy essence came,
      Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed
      From matter’s base encumbering weed?
         Or dost thou, hid from sight,
         Wait, like some spell-bound knight,
Through blank oblivious years th’ appointed hour,
To break thy trance and reassume thy power?
Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be?
O say what art thou, when no more thou ’rt thee?

      Life! we’ve been long together,
      Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
         ’Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
         Perhaps ’t will cost a sigh, a tear;
         Then steal away, give little warning,
            Choose thine own time;
      Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime
            Bid me Good morning.

'Tis that delightful transport we can feel,
Which painters cannot paint, or words reveal.
Nor any art we know of,—can conceal.
Canst thou describe the sun-beams to the blind,
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?
So neither can we by description show
This first of all felicities below.

When happy Love pours magic o'er the soul,
And all our thoughts in sweet delirium roll;
When Contemplation spreads its rainbow wings,
And every flutter some new rapture brings;
How sweetly then our moments glide away,
And dreams repeat the raptures of the day;
We live in ecstasy to all things kind,
For love can teach a moral to the mind.
But are there not some other marks that prove,
What is this wonder of the soul, call'd love?

O yes, there are, but of a different kind,
The dreadful horrors of a dismal mind.
Some jealous fury throws her poison'd dart,
And rends in pieces the distracted heart,

When love's a tyrant, and the soul a slave,
No hopes remain to thought, but in the grave;
In that dark den, it sees an end to grief,
And what was once its dread, becomes relief.

What are the iron chains that hands have wrought?
The hardest chains to break, are those of thought.
Think well of this, ye lovers, and be kind,
Nor play with torture—or a tortured mind.