Penny Dreadfuls, 1812 · page 193 of 258
Psyche, and other poems — page 193: what you’re looking at
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# Page 175: Poetry This page contains verse numbered 175, presenting a romantic poem in multiple stanzas. The speaker describes emerging from a night of melancholy and fear into daylight, finding solace in nature's beauty—birdsong, fresh air, and morning light. The poem then directly addresses someone who reluctantly rises from bed, reproaching their indifference to the dawn's charms. The speaker concludes by revealing their own intense emotional experience: nature's beauty revives them after enduring "a night of horrors, only less than death," suggesting they have survived some unspecified trauma or ordeal. The verse appears emotionally heightened and melodramatic in tone, consistent with Victorian popular literature.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
175 Through the long night impatient, sad, and weary, How melancholy life itself appeared ! Lo! cheerful day illumes my prospects dreary, And how diminished are the ills I feared ! Though pleasure shine not in the expected morrow, Though nought were promised but return of care, The light of Heaven could banish half my sorrow, And comfort whispers in the fresh, cool air. { hear the grateful voice of joy and pleasure, All nature seems my sadness to reprove, High trills the lark his wild ecstatic measure, The groves resound with liberty and love: Ere his glad voice proclaimed thy dawning early, . How oft deceived I rose thy light to hail; Through the damp grass hoarse accents sounded cheerly, As wooed: his distant love the wakeful rail. Oh, you! who murmur at the call of duty, And quit your pillow with reluctant sloth, For whom the Morn in vain displays her beauty, While tasteless you can greet her smiles so loth ; You cannot know the charm which o’er me stealing, | Revives my senses as I taste her breath, Which half repays the agony of feeling A night of horrors, only less than death, Q2 ¥ comichbooks.com