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The Veil, and Other Poems cover

The Veil, and Other Poems

Chapter 44: MOURN'ST THOU NOW?
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About This Book

The collection assembles short lyric and narrative poems that blend pastoral observation, eerie wonder, and quiet melancholy. Many pieces evoke nighttime or liminal settings, where imagination and memory animate ordinary scenes into encounters with fairies, spectres, or uncanny beauty. Voices range from whimsical to mournful, moving through snapshots of nature, domestic objects, and human regret, while formal restraint and vivid sensory detail create dreamlike moods. Recurring concerns include the power of perception, the edge between waking and dreaming, and the consolation or peril found in remembrance and fancy.

MOURN'ST THOU NOW?

LONG ago from radiant palace,
Dream-bemused, in flood of moon,
Stole the princess Seraphita
Into forest gloom.
Wail of hemlock; cold the dewdrops;
Danced the Dryads in the chace;
Heavy hung ambrosial fragrance;
Moonbeams blanched her ravished face.
Frail and clear the notes delusive;
Mocking phantoms in a rout
Thridded the night-cloistered thickets,
Wove their sorceries in and out....
Mourn'st thou now? Or do thine eyelids
Frame a vision dark, divine,
O'er this imp of star and wild-flower—
Of a god once thine?