Birds, yet in freedom, shun the net
Which Love around your haunts hath set;
Or, circled by his fatal fire,
Your hearts shall burn, your hopes expire.
A bird of free and careless wing
Was I, through many a smiling spring;
But caught within the subtle snare,
I burn, and feebly flutter there.
Who ne'er have loved, and loved in vain,
Can neither feel nor pity pain,
The cold repulse, the look askance,
The lightning of Love's angry glance.
In flattering dreams I deem'd thee mine
Now hope, and he who hoped, decline;
Like melting wax, or withering flower,,
I feel my passion, and thy power.
My light of life! ah, tell me why
That pouting lip, and alter'd eye?
My bird of love! my beauteous mate!
And art thou changed, and canst thou hate?
Mine eyes like wintry streams o'erflow:
What wretch with me would barter woe?
My bird relent: one note could give
A charm, to bid thy lover live.
My curdling blood, my madd'ning brain,
In silent anguish I sustain ;
And still thy heart, without partaking
One pang, exults-while mine is breaking.
Pour me the poison; fear not thou!
Thou canst not murder more than now:
I've lived to curse my natal day,
And Love, that thus can lingering slay.
My wounded soul, my bleeding breast,
Can patience preach thee into rest?
Alas! too late, I dearly know
That joy is harbinger of woe.
TIME! on whose arbitrary wing
The varying hours must flag or fly,
Whose tardy winter, fleeting spring,
But drag or drive us on to die—
Hail thou! who on my birth bestow'd
Those boons to all that know thee known; Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.
I would not one fond heart should share
The bitter moments thou hast given ;
And pardon thee, since thou couldst spare
All that I loved, to peace or heaven.
To them be joy or rest, on me
Thy future ills shall press
in vain ;
I nothing owe but years to thee,
A debt already paid in pain.
Yet e'en that pain was some relief;
It felt, but still forgot thy power: The active agony of grief
Retards, but never counts the hour. Enjoy I've sigh'd to think thy flight
Would soon subside from swift to slow;
Thy cloud could overcast the light,
But could not add a night to woe.
For then, however drear and dark,
My soul was suited to thy sky;
One star alone shot forth a spark
To prove thee-not Eternity.
That beam hath sunk; and now thou art
A blank-a thing to count and curse,
Through each dull tedious trifling part,
Which all regret, yet all rehearse.
One scene even thou canst not deform;
The limit of thy sloth or speed,
When future wanderers bear the storm
Which we shall sleep too sound to heed:
And I can smile to think how weak
Thine efforts shortly shall be shown,
When all the vengeance thou canst wreak Must fall upon-a nameless stone!
THOU art not false, but thou art fickle,
To those thyself so fondly sought;
The tears that thou hast forced to trickle
Are doubly bitter from that thought;
'T is this which breaks the heart thou grievest,
Too well thou lov'st-too soon thou leavest.
The wholly false the heart despises,
And spurns deceiver and deceit ;
But she who not a thought disguises,
Whose love is as sincere as sweet,-
When she can change who loved so truly,
It feels what mine has felt so newly.
To dream of joy and wake to sorrow
Is doom'd to all who love or live;
And if, when conscious on the morrow,
We scarce our fancy can forgive
That cheated us in slumber only,
To leave the waking soul more lonely.
What must they feel whom no false vision,
But truest, tenderest passion warm'd?
Sincere, but swift in sad transition,
As if a dream alone had charm'd?
Ah! sure such grief is fancy's scheming,
And all thy change can be but dreaming!
ON BEING ASKED WHAT WAS THE "ORIGIN OF LOVE?"
THE "Origin of Love!"-Ah why
That cruel question ask of me,
When thou mayst read in many an eye
He starts to life on seeing thee?
And shouldst thou seek his end to know,
My heart forebodes, my fears foresee,
He'll linger long in silent woe;
But live-until I cease to be.
REMEMBER him whom passion's power
Severely, deeply, vainly proved:
Remember thou that dangerous hour
When neither fell, though both were loved.
That yielding breast, that melting eye,
Too much invited to be blest:
That gentle prayer, that pleading sigh,
The wilder wish reproved, represt.
Oh! let me feel that all I lost,
But saved thee all that conscience fears; And blush for every pang it cost
Το spare the vain remorse of years.
Yet think of this when many a tongue, Whose busy accents whisper blame, Would do the heart that loved thee wrong, And brand a nearly blighted name.
Think that, whate'er to others, thou
Hast seen each selfish thought subdued:
I bless thy purer soul even now,
Even now, in midnight solitude.
Oh, God! that we had met in time,
Our hearts as fond, thy hand more free; When thou hadst loved without a crime, And I been less unworthy thee!
Far may thy days, as heretofore,
From this our gaudy world be past!
And, that too bitter moment o'er,
Oh! may such trial be thy last!
This heart, alas! perverted long,
Itself destroy'd might there destroy;
To meet thee in the glittering throng,
Would wake presumption's hope of joy.
Then to the things whose bliss or woe,
Like mine, is wild and worthless áll,
That world resign-such scenes forego,
Where those who feel must surely fall.
Thy youth, thy charms, thy tenderness,
Thy soul from long seclusion pure,
From what even here hath past, may guess,
What there thy bosom must endure.
Oh! pardon that imploring tear,
Since not by Virtue shed in vain, My frenzy drew from eyes so dear;
For me they shall not weep again.
Though long and mournful must it be,
The thought that we no more may meet; Yet I deserve the stern decree,
And almost deem the sentence sweet.
Still, had I loved thee less, my heart
Had then less sacrificed to thine ;
It felt not half so much to part,
As if its guilt had made thee mine.
ON LORD THURLOW'S POEMS. *
WHEN Thurlow this damn'd nonsense sent (I hope I am not violent),
Nor men nor gods knew what he meant.
And since not ev'n our Rogers' praise
To common sense his thoughts could raise-
Why would they let him print his lays?
To me, divine Apollo, grant-O!
Hermilda's first and second canto,-
I 'm fitting up a new portmanteau ;
*See MOORE's Notices, vol. i, p. 289.
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