Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich / [by Thomas Bailey Aldrich] [electronic text]

THE UNFORGIVEN.

NEAR my bed, there, hangs the picture jewels could not buy from me: 'T is a Siren, a brown Siren, in her sea-weed drapery, Playing on a lute of amber, by the margin of a sea.

In the east, the rose of morning seems as if 't would blossom soon, But it never, never blossoms, in this picture; and the moon Never ceases to be crescent, and the June is always June.

And the heavy-branched banana never yields its creamy fruit; In the citron-trees are nightingales forever stricken mute; And the Siren sits, her fingers on the pulses of the lute.

In the hushes of the midnight, when the heliotropes grow strong With the dampness, I hear music—hear a quiet, plaintive song— A most sad, melodious utterance, as of some immortal wrong—

Like the pleading, oft repeated, of a Soul that pleads in vain, Of a damnéd Soul repentant, that would fain be pure again!— And I lie awake and listen to the music of her pain.

And whence comes this mournful music?—whence, unless it chance to be From the Siren, the brown Siren, in her sea-weed drapery, Playing on a lute of amber, by the margin of a sea.