Love’s Apparition and Evanishment
An Allegoric Romance

Like a lone Arab, Old and Blind,
Some Caravan had left behind,
Who sits beside a ruin’d well,
Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell;
And now he hangs his aged head aslant
And listens for a human sound – in vain!
And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant,
Upturns his eyeless face from heaven to gain:-
Even thus, in vacant mood, one sultry hour,
Resting my eye upon a drooping plant,
With brow low-bent, within my garden-bower,
I sate upon the couch of camomile;
And-whether ’twas a transient sleep, perchance,
Flitted across the idle brain, the while
I watch’d the sickly calm with aimless scope,
In my own heart; or that, indeed a trance,
Turn’d my eye inward-thee, O genial Hope,
Love’s elder sister! thee did I behold,
Drest as a bridesmaid, but all pale and cold,
With roseless cheek, all pale and cold and dim,
Lie lifeless at my feet!
And then came Love, a sylph in bridal trim,
And stood beside my seat,
She bent and kissed her sister’s lips
As she was wont to do;-
Alas! ’twas but a chilling breath
Woke just enough of life in death
To make hope die anew.

L’Envoy

In vain we supplicate the powers above
There is no resurrection for the love
That, nursed in tenderest care, yet fades away
In the chill’d heart by gradual self-decay.

S.T. Coleridge