Poem by Richard Monckton Milnes

* * *

One moment more before that fatal leap!
One moment more! and now thou hadst been free
To wanton in the autumn sun or sleep
In the warmed crystal of thy little sea.
I saw thee pant,--I saw the flicke'ring shades
Wander beneath thy silver, loth to die,--
And still their glazèd brilliancy upbraids
The heavens that they permit man's perfidy.
But is it not a weak nor sinless thought,
Since Nature's law thus undisturbed has run,
Heedless of all the same hard fate has wrought,
To pass the myriad and deplore the one?
No, no,--our heart has but a narrow span,
Let it hold all the sympathy it can.

1. Meditative Fragments, on Venice
2. Switzerland and Italy
3. To the Moon of the South
4. On the Church of the Madeleine
5. To Charles Lamb

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