Henry Louis Vivien Derozio

 

THE HARP OF INDIA  Why hang'st thou lonely on you withered bough?  Unstrung for ever, must thou there remain;  Thy music once was sweet-- who hears it now?  Why doth the breeze sigh over thee in vain?  Silence hath bound thee with her fatal chain;  Neglected, mute, and desolate art thou,  Like ruined monument on desert plain:  O! many a hand more worthy far than mine  Once thy harmonious chords to sweetness gave,  And many a wreath for them did Fame entwine  Of flowers still blooming on the minstrel's grave:  Those hands are cold-- but if thy notes divine  May be by mortal wakened once again,  Harp of my country, let me strike the strain!   TO MY NATIVE LAND My country! In thy days of glory past A beauteous halo circled round thy brow and worshipped as a deity thou wast— Where is thy glory, where the reverence now? Thy eagle pinion is chained down at last, And grovelling in the lowly dust art thou, Thy minstrel hath no wreath to weave for thee Save the sad story of thy misery! Well—let me dive into the depths of time And bring from out the ages, that have rolled A few small fragments of these wrecks sublime  Which human eye may never more behold And let the guerdon of my labour be, My fallen country! One kind wish for thee!    GOING INTO DARKNESS "It is that hour when dusky night Comes gathering o're departing light, When hue by hue and ray by ray, Thine eye may watch it waste away, Until thou canst no more behold The faded tints of pallid gold And soft descended the shades of night, As did those hues so purely bright; And in the blue sky, star by star, Shines out, like happiness afar; A wilderness of worlds! - To well In one, with those we have loved well Where bliss indeed! - The waters flow Gurgling, in darkest hue below, And 'gainst the shore the ripple breaks As from its cave, the east wind wakes, But lo! where Dian's crest on high appears, Faint as the memory of departing years.