Have pass'd to darkness with the vanish'd age. Who late so free as Spanish girls were seen Ere War uprose in his volcanic rage), With braided tresses bounding o'er the green, While on the gay dance shone Night's loverloving Queen? LXXXII. Oh! many a time and oft had Harold loved, Or dream'd he loved, since rapture is a dream; But now his wayward bosom was unmoved, For not yet had he drunk of Lethe's stream: And lately had he learn'd with truth to deem Love has no gift so grateful as his wings: How fair, how young, how soft soe'er he seem. Full from the fount of Joy's delicious springs Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings. LXXXIII. Yet to the beauteous form he was not blind, Though now it moved him as it moves the wise; Not that Philosophy on such a mind E'er deign'd to bend her chastely-awful eyes: But Passion raves itself to rest, or flies; And Vice, that digs her own voluptuous tomb, Had buried long his hopes, no more to rise: Pleasure's pall'd victim! life-abhorring gloom Wrote on his faded brow curst Cain's unresting doom. LXXXIV Still he beheld, nor mingled with the throng; But view'd them not with misanthropic hate; Fain would he now have join'd the dance, the song: But who may smile that sinks beneath his fate? And as in Beauty's bower he pensive sate, To charms as fair as those that soothed his happier day. TO INEZ. Nay, smile not at my sullen brow; Shouldst weep, and haply weep in vain. Nor low Ambition's honours lost, That bids me loathe my present state, And fly from all I prized the most: It is that weariness which springs From all I meet, or hear, or see: To me no pleasure Beauty brings; Thine eyes have scarce a charm for me. It is that settled, ceaseless gloom The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore, That will not look beyond the tomb, But cannot hope for rest before. What Exile from himself can flee? To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of life-the demon Thought. |