The cup must hold a deadlier draught, From all her troubled visions free, 4. For wert thou vanish'd from my mind, 5. For well I know, that such had been And, Oh! I feel in that was given Thou wert too like a dream of Heaven, March 14th, 1812. ON A CORNELIAN HEART WHICH WAS BROKEN. 1. ILL-FATED Heart! and can it be That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain? Have years of care for thine and thee Alike been all employ'd in vain? 2. Yet precious seems each shatter'd part, [This poem and the following were written some years ago.] FEW TO A YOUTHFUL FRIEND. 1. years have pass'd since thou and I Were firmest friends, at least in name, And childhood's gay sincerity 6 Preserved our feelings long the same. 2. But now, like me, too well thou know'st What trifles oft the heart recall; And those who once have loved the most Too soon forget they loved at all. 3. And such the change the heart displays, 4. If so, it never shall be mine To mourn the loss of such a heart ; The fault was Nature's fault, not thine, Which made thee fickle as thou art. 5. As rolls the ocean's changing tide, 6. It boots not, that together bred, 7. And when we bid adieu to youth, We sigh a long farewell to truth; That world corrupts the noblest soul. 8. Ah, joyous season! when the mind 9. Not so in Man's maturer years, When Man himself is but a tool; When interest sways our hopes and fears, And all must love and hate by rule. VOL. V. N 10. With fools in kindred vice the same, 11. Such is the common lot of man: Can we reverse the general plan, Nor be what all in turn must be? 12. No, for myself, so dark my fate Man and the world I so much hate, 13. But thou, with spirit frail and light, |