Alas! the steed of Hope maketh advance no more; 
Walking on with my eyes marred by the mist
Of suffering, I falter, deep, deep down
To the eternal Oblivion, dolorously wailing,
Whilst for my trepid heart startl’d as a rabbit hunted, 
The sound of Future is like but the deepest knell.
Yet, Belovèd, I blame thee not for snaring me 
With the full charms of a man or making me 
Lost far astray into Love’s sweets of nowhere,
    For mine was the fault. 
O my limbs have been sore with the journey, 
And the burning recollections thong my brow;
Inside my heart shrin’d is his name that but 
Maketh it blind with a waste of incense sweet;
For thinking of my Love’s phantom
My muse hath forgot to sing.
Alas! alas! my lips tremble to elude
The allusion, and my love is dumb.
O the Sun illumining that antique land,
Tell me, prithee, the tales of yore;
O the Moon silent o’er seas’ purple stretch,
Thou once sawst him passing by.
He was as fair as an autumn day, when
August or September stands in its ripening clime,
More mature than the eventide of early May,
And less genial is November’s glowing star.
His eyes, they were dark as the nightfall 
Arriving betimes, eloquent, yet full of mysteries;
Sinking into the silence of thought, as he oft didst,
So pensive, so melancholy they appear’d,
But they lit into sly tenderness when he smiled.
E’en let the Night unto Day be married, 
Morn unto Even, I could not know thee,
As ne’er will Aurora meet Hesper,
As ne’er the lotus flower of a summer day,
See the argent sway of the hibernal snow.
In vain, in vain doth the solemn vines tie my Valentine.
I ween that the remotest distance, O thrice-desired, 
Is the one us betwixt: beyond the sundering of Life and Death,
How many are there the lapses of Time?
A thousand times have the flowers bloomed and faded;
The mount whereon thou once stood sunk into the ; 
 Green corn is waving sweet,
Where once battlements salut’d the easterly Aurora.
In those days far retired from peace,
Thy sceptre’s gem ecllips’d the resplendent glow
Of the empyreal hierarchy, and thy tower,  
Aspiring high, locked up the melody of strings, 
And the wasted youth of dolorous roses—
But, forget all that regal futility!
If I were a minstrel with attic ditties 
Serenading thee under that silver pavilion, 
If I were a dancer whose tresses unconfine’d
Were by thee adorned the buds of May,
The fair orchid who dwelt in the bliss of thy garden,
The moon-lit water thou haply glimpsed 
When serenely wandering in the haunts
Of Poesy, —but, to an and end put these all:
Better ’tis when I had climbed the highest height 
Unclimbed yet, whence, with hid thee, the two 
Kindred spirits would muse upon Eternity 
Of the Earth and the Heaven. 
Let not my Love be called idolatry,
Nor my Belovèd as an idol show, —for
Fallen into the Lethe hath thy empery, 
And no bards chaunt deathlessly the laud for thee—
But my soul’s delight, the peerless sapphire 
Of joy inside mine heart that will aye shine. 
Peace to the woesome choir by war sufferers;
Peace to the clang of those glaives ensanguined;
Peace to the alabaster steed clattering 
Along the hard frozen path;
Peace to the battle-drum and the bugle-horn;
Peace to the far-off Tragedy startling the air
’Mongst friends and foes,
And that disorder’d world, the Time of Chaos! 
 Only Love singeth,
O my lips will sing, for Love’s sake,
For faded thee, a strain so sadly sweet,
As though from the deep throat 
Of a hopeless Philomel midst the laurels green, 
Pouring her soul in vain, for calling in memory a red rose 
Whose petals cold into the Stygian lake had sunk.