Poems at the End of John Woodvil,
1802

HELEN

By Mary Lamb

(Summer, 1800. Text of 1818)

High-born Helen, round your dwelling
These twenty years I’ve paced in vain: 
Haughty beauty, thy lover’s duty
Hath been to glory in his pain.

        High-born Helen, plainly telling
          Stories of thy cold disdain;
        I starve, I die, now you comply,
          And I no longer can complain.

        These twenty years I’ve lived on tears. 
          Dwelling for ever on a frown;
        On sighs I’ve fed, your scorn my bread;
          I perish now you kind are grown.

        Can I, who loved my beloved
          But for the scorn “was in her eye,”
        Can I be moved for my beloved,
          When she “returns me sigh for sigh?”

        In stately pride, by my bed-side,
          High-born Helen’s portrait’s hung;
        Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays
          Are nightly to the portrait sung.

        To that I weep, nor ever sleep,
          Complaining all night long to her—­
        Helen, grown old, no longer cold,
          Said, “you to all men I prefer.”

BALLAD

        From the German

        (Spring, 1800.  Text of 1818)

The clouds are blackening, the storms threatening,
And ever the forest maketh a moan: 
Billows are breaking, the damsel’s heart aching,
Thus by herself she singeth alone,
Weeping right plenteously.

“The world is empty, the heart is dead surely,
In this world plainly all seemeth amiss: 
To thy breast, holy one, take now thy little one,
I have had earnest of all earth’s bliss,
Living right lovingly.”

HYPOCHONDRIACUS

(October, 1800.  Text of 1818)

By myself walking,
To myself talking,
When as I ruminate
On my untoward fate,
Scarcely seem I
Alone sufficiently,
Black thoughts continually
Crowding my privacy;
They come unbidden,
Like foes at a wedding,
Thrusting their faces
In better guests’ places,
Peevish and malecontent,
Clownish, impertinent,
Dashing the merriment: 
So in like fashions
Dim cogitations
Follow and haunt me,
Striving to daunt me. 
In my heart festering,
In my ears whispering,
“Thy friends are treacherous,
Thy foes are dangerous,
Thy dreams ominous.”

        Fierce Anthropophagi,
        Spectra, Diaboli,
        What scared St. Anthony,
        Hobgoblins, Lemures,
        Dreams of Antipodes,
        Night-riding Incubi
        Troubling the fantasy,
        All dire illusions
        Causing confusions;
        Figments heretical,
        Scruples fantastical,
        Doubts diabolical,
        Abaddon vexeth me,
        Mahu perplexeth me,
        Lucifer teareth me——­