POEMS OF JAMES RYDER RANDALL
O beautiful child of a beautiful morn!
There’s a beautiful bodice begemming thy breast,
But it speaks of the cerement, that Seraphs have worn,
And it tells of a nightingale slain in its nest.
And I gaze, and I gaze, and I gaze, ’till the moon,
With its irised aureola, sleeps on her brow—
My Isis! thy image departed too soon,
For I gaze and I gaze on thy vacancy now.
O beautiful child of a beautiful day!
There’s a beautiful song on thy Sibylline lip;
But it sings of the breaker that boils in the bay,
And it dirges the doom of a desolate ship.
Lost—lost, long ago! and she dreams o’er the sea,
Where the rude Saxon daisies above her have blown;
I know that the angels are angry with me,
For the woman is dead that my spirit hath known!
New Orleans, 1861.
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