116    LITERATURE   OF   LOUISIANA   TERRITORY.
Nay ; dearest, 'tis too much — this heart
Must break when thou art gone ;
It must not be ; we may not part :
I could not live " alone."
WEDDED LOVE.
Come, rouse thee, dearest! —'tis not well
To let the spirit brood
Thus darkly o'er the cares that swell
Life's current to a flood.
As brooks and torrents, rivers, all
Increase the gulf in which they fall,
Such thoughts, by gathering up the rills
Of lesser griefs, spread real ills,
And, with their gloomy shades, conceal
The land-marks Hope would else reveal.
Come, rouse thee, now — I know thy mind,
And would its strength awaken ;
Proud, gifted, noble, ardent, kind, —
Strange thou should be thus shaken !
But rouse afresh each energy,
And be what Heaven intended thee ;
Throw from thy thoughts this wearying weight,
And prove thy spirit firmly great :
I would not see thee bend below
The angry storms of earthly woe.
Full well I know the generous soul
Which warms thee into life,
Each spring which can its powers control,
Familiar to thy wife, —
For deem'st thou she had stoop'dto bind
Her fate unto a common mind?
The eagle-like ambition, nursed
From childhood in £er heart, had first
Consumed, with its Promethean flame,
The shrine — than sunk her soul to shame.
Then rouse thee, dearest, from the dream
That fetters now thy powers :