No, no, my flame was not pretended;
For, oh! I loved you most sincerely;
And-though our dream at last is ended-
My bosom still esteems you dearly.
No more we meet in yonder bowers;
Absence has made me prone to roving;
But older, firmer hearts than ours
Have found monotony in loving.
Your cheek's soft bloom is unimpair'd,
New beauties still are daily bright'ning,
Your eye for conquest beams prepared,
The forge of love's resistless lightning.
Arm'd thus to make their bosoms bleed,
Many will throng to sigh like me, love!
More constant they may prove, indeed;
Fonder, alas! they ne'er can be, love!
LINES ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY,
WHO HAD BEEN ALARMED BY A BULLET FIRED BY THE AUTHOR WHILE DISCHARGING HIS PISTOLS IN A GARDEN.
DOUBTLESS, Sweet girl! the hissing lead,
Wafting destruction o'er thy charms,
And hurtling o'er thy lovely head,*
Has fill'd that breast with fond alarms.
Surely some envious demon's force,
Vex'd to behold such beauty here,
Impell'd the bullet's viewless course,
Diverted from its first career.
Yes! in that nearly fatal hour
The ball obey'd some hell-born guide;
But Heaven, with interposing power,
In pity turn'd the death aside.
Yet, as perchance one trembling tear
Upon that thrilling bosom fell;
Which I, th' unconscious cause of fear,
Extracted from its glistening cell:
Say, what dire penance can atone
For such an outrage done to thee?
Arraign'd before thy beauty's throne,
What punishment wilt thou decree?
This word is used by Gray, in his poem to the Fatal Sisters :-
Iron sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles through the darken'd air."
Might I perform the judge's part,
The sentence I should scarce deplore;
It only would restore a heart
Which but belong'd to thee before.
The least atonement I can make
Is to become no longer free ;
Henceforth I breathe but for thy sake,
Thou shalt be all in all to me.
But thou, perhaps, mayst now reject
Such expiation of my guilt:
Come, then, some other mode elect;
Let it be death, or what thou wilt.
Choose then, relentless! and I swear
Nought shall thy dread decree prevent;
Yet hold-one little word forbear!
Let it be ought but banishment.
'Αεὶ, δ ̓ ἀεί με φεύγει.-ANACREON.
THE roses of love glad the garden of life,
Though nurtured 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,
Till time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
Or prunes them for ever, in love's last adieu.
In vain with endearments we soothe the sad heart,
In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
Or death disunite us in love's last adieu !
Still Hope, breathing peace through the grief-swollen breast,
Will whisper, "Our meeting we yet may renew:"
With this dream of deceit half our sorrow 's repress'd,
Nor taste we the poison of love's last adieu !
Oh! mark you yon pair: in the sunshine of youth
Love twined round their childhood his flowers as they grew;
They flourish awhile in the season of truth,
Till chill'd by the winter of love's last adieu !
Sweet lady! why thus doth a tear steal its way
Down a cheek which outrivals thy bosom in hue?
Yet why do I ask?-to distraction a prey,
Thy reason has perish'd with love's last adieu !
Oh! who is yon misanthrope, shunning mankind?
From cities to caves of the forest he flew :
There, raving, he howls his complaint to the wind;
The mountains reverberate love's last adieu !
Now hate rules a heart which in love's easy chains
Once passion's tumultuous blandishments knew,
Despair now inflames the dark tide of his veins;
He ponders in frenzy on love's last adieu !
How he envies the wretch with a soul wrapt in steel!
His pleasures are scarce, yet his troubles are few,
Who laughs at the pang that he never can feel,
And dreads not the anguish of love's last adieu!
Youth flies, life decays, even hope is o'ercast;
No more with love's former devotion we sue:
He spreads his young wing, he retires with the blast;
The shroud of affection is love's last adieu !
In this life of probation for rapture divine,
Astrea declares that some penance is due ;
From him who has worshipp'd at love's gentle shrine,
The atonement is ample in love's last adieu !
Who kneels to the god, on his altar of light
Must myrtle and cypress alternately strew:
His myrtle, an emblem of purest delight;
His cypress the garland of love's last adieu !
IN law an infant, and in years a boy,*
In mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;
Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild;
Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;
Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Damætas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal when others just begin:
Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure's bowl;
But, pall'd with vice, he breaks his former chain,
And what was once his bliss appears his bane.
MARION! why that pensive brow?
What disgust to life hast thou?
Change that discontented air;
Frowns become not one so fair.
'Tis not love disturbs thy rest,
Love's a stranger to thy breast;
In law, every person is an infant who has not attained the age of twenty-one.
He in dimpling smiles appears,
Or mourns in sweetly timid tears,
Or bends the languid eyelid down,
But shuns the cold forbidding frown.
Then resume thy former fire,-
Some will love, and all admire ;
While that icy aspect chills us,
Nought but cool indifference thrills us.
Wouldst thou wandering hearts beguile,
Smile at least, or seem to smile.
Eyes like thine were never meant
To hide their orbs in dark restraint;
Spite of all thou fain wouldst say,
Still in truant beams they play.
Thy lips-but here my modest muse
Her impulse chaste must needs refuse :
She blushes, curt'sies, frowns--in short she
Dreads lest the subject should transport me;
And flying off in search of reason,
Brings prudence back in proper season;
All I shall therefore say (whate'er
I think, is neither here nor there)
Is, that such lips, of looks endearing,
Were form'd for better things than sneering:
Of smoothing compliments divested,
Advice at least's disinterested;
Such is my artless song to thee,
From all the flow of flattery free;
Counsel like mine is like a brother's,
My heart is given to some others;
That is to say, unskill'd to cozen,
It shares itself among a dozen.
Marion, adieu! oh, pr'ythee slight not
This warning, though it may delight not;
And, lest my precepts be displeasing
To those who think remonstrance teasing,
At once I'll tell thee our opinion
Concerning woman's soft dominion:
Howe'er we gaze with admiration
On eyes of blue or lips carnation,
Howe'er the flowing locks attract us,
Howe'er those beauties may distract us,
Still fickle, we are prone to rove,
These cannot fix our souls to love:
It is not too severe a stricture
To say they form a pretty picture;
But wouldst thou see the secret chain
Which binds us in your humble train,
To hail you queens of all creation,
Know, in a word, 'tis ANIMATION.
WHO PRESENTED TO THE AUTHOR A LOCK OF HAIR BRAIDED
WITH HIS OWN, AND APPOINTED A NIGHT IN DECEMBER TO
MEET HIM IN THE GARDEN.
THESE locks, which fondly thus entwine,
In firmer chains our hearts confine,.
Than all th' unmeaning protestations
Which swell with nonsense love orations.
Our love is fix'd, I think we've proved it,
Nor time, nor place, nor art have moved it;
Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,
With groundless jealousy repine,
With silly whims, and fancies frantic,
Merely to make our love romantic?
Why should you weep like Lydia Languish,
And fret with self-created anguish?
Or doom the lover you have chosen,
On winter nights to sigh half-frozen;
In leafless shades to sue for pardon,
Only because the scene 's a garden?
For gardens seem, by one consent,
Since Shakspeare set the precedent,
Since Juliet first declared her passion,
To form the place of assignation.*
Oh! would some modern muse inspire,
And seat her by a sea-coal fire;
Or had the bard at Christmas written
And laid the scene of love in Britain,
He surely, in commiseration,
Had changed the place of declaration.
In Italy I've no objection:
Warm nights are proper for reflection;
But here our climate is so rigid,
That love itself is rather frigid:
Think on our chilly situation,
And curb this rage for imitation;
Then let us meet, as oft we've done,
Beneath the influence of the sun;
Or, if at midnight I must meet you,
Within your mansion let me greet you:
There we can love for hours together,
Much better, in such snowy weather,
Than placed in all th' Arcadian groves
That ever witness'd rural loves;
In the above little piece, the author has been accused by some candid readers of introducing the naine of a lady from whom he was some hundred miles distant at the time this was written; and poor Juliet, who has slept so long in "the tomb of all the Capulets," has been converted, with a trifling alteration of her name, into an English damsel, walking in a garden of their own creation, during the month of December, in a village where the author never passed a winter. Such has been the candour of some ingenious critics. We would advise these liberal commentators on taste and arbiters of decorum to read Shakspeare.
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