Excerpt From "Thoughts"

Eyes, say, why were ye given your sight,
Your full blue orbs, with their roll and their light,
Which your lids of the lily with violet tinge
So often of late, with their long, dark fringe
From their folds in your arches descended to shade?
Ye have told many things—but not why ye were made.
“We were made to delight in the beauties of earth;
Then to see how they perished, how little their worth
They are changing, illusive, uncertain and brief,
From the flower’s opening bud to its soon withered leaf.
The birth of their being is joined to decay;
They flourish, allure, and expire in a day.
On things like ourselves with delight we have shone;
We have studied their language and found it our own;
But the offspring of grief would extinguish their light,
And the spoiler’s pale hand lock them up from our sight.
Or, keener, far keener, they’d let us behold
Their looks turning from us, unfeeling and cold,
Bequeathing this line, as we saw them depart,
‘We go not alone, but are drawn by the heart!’
For things such as these, and still more were we made;
For watching, for aching, to sink and to fade;
To pour forth in silence the waters of sorrow,
Then, to close in a night that will bring us no morrow?”