2.

When lovers parted
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;
A few years older,
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her
For whom they sigh!
When linked together,
In every weather,

They pluck Love's feather
From out his wing-

He'll stay for ever,.

But sadly shiver

Without his plumage, when past the Spring.".

3.

Like Chiefs of Faction,

His life is action

A formal paction

That curbs his reign,

Obscures his glory,

Despot no more, he

Such territory

Quits with disdain.
Still, still advancing,
With banners glancing,
His power enhancing,

He must move on-
Repose but cloys him,
Retreat destroys him,

Love brooks not a degraded throne.

i. Through every weather

We pluck.-[MS. G.]

ii. He'll sadly shiver

And droop for ever,

Shorn of the plumage which sped his spring.—[MS. G.]

iii.

that sped his Spring.-[MS. G.]

551

4.

Wait not, fond lover!
Till years are over,
And then recover

As from a dream.
While each bewailing
The other's failing,
With wrath and railing,
All hideous seem-
While first decreasing,
Yet not quite ceasing,
Wait not till teasing,
All passion blight:
If once diminished
Love's reign is finished—

Then part in friendship,-and bid good-night."

i.

5.

So shall Affection

To recollection

The dear connection

Bring back with joy:
You had not waited ii.
Till, tired or hated,
Your passions sated
Began to cloy.
Your last embraces
Leave no cold traces-
The same fond faces

As through the past:

And eyes, the mirrors

Of your sweet errors,

Reflect but rapture-not least though last.

His reign is finished

One last embrace, then, and bid good-night.-[MS. G.] ii. You have not waited

Till tired and hated

All passions sated.—[MS. G.]

6.

True, separations ↳
Ask more than patience;
What desperations

From such have risen !

But yet remaining,

What is't but chaining

Hearts which, once waning,

Beat 'gainst their prison?
Time can but cloy love,
And use destroy love:
The wingéd boy, Love,
Is but for boys-
You'll find it torture

Though sharper, shorter,

To wean, and not wear out your joys.

December 1, 1819.

[First published, New Monthly Magazine, 1832,

vol. xxxv. pp. 310-312.]

ODE TO A LADY WHOSE LOVER WAS KILLED BY A BALL, WHICH AT THE SAME TIME SHIVERED A PORTRAIT NEXT HIS HEART.

Мотто.

On peut trouver des femmes qui n'ont jamais eu de galanterie, mais il est rare d'en trouver qui n'en aient jamais eu qu'une.—[Réflexions . . du Duc de la Rochefoucauld, No. lxxiii.]

I.

LADY! in whose heroic port

And Beauty, Victor even of Time,
And haughty lineaments, appear

Much that is awful, more that's dear-
Wherever human hearts resort

There must have been for thee a Court,
And Thou by acclamation Queen,
Where never Sovereign yet had been.

i. True separations.-[MS. G.]

That eye so soft, and yet severe,

Perchance might look on Love as Crime;
And yet regarding thee more near-
The traces of an unshed tear

Compressed back to the heart,

And mellowed Sadness in thine air,
Which shows that Love hath once been there,
To those who watch thee will disclose
More than ten thousand tomes of woes
Wrung from the vain Romancer's art.
With thee how proudly Love hath dwelt !
His full Divinity was felt,

Maddening the heart he could not melt,
Till Guilt became Sublime;

But never yet did Beauty's Zone
For him surround a lovelier throne,
Than in that bosom once his own:

And he the Sun and Thou the Clime
Together must have made a Heaven
For which the Future would be given.

2.

And thou hast loved-Oh! not in vain!
And not as common Mortals love.

The Fruit of Fire is Ashes,

The Ocean's tempest dashes

Wrecks and the dead upon the rocky shore:
True Passion must the all-searching changes prove,
The Agony of Pleasure and of Pain,

Till Nothing but the Bitterness remain ;

And the Heart's Spectre flitting through the brain Scoffs at the Exorcism which would remove.

3.

And where is He thou lovedst? in the tomb,
Where should the happy Lover be !

For him could Time unfold a brighter doom,
Or offer aught like thee?

He in the thickest battle died,

Where Death is Pride;

And Thou his widow-not his bride,
Wer't not more free-

Here where all love, till Love is made
A bondage or a trade,

Here-thou so redolent of Beauty,

In whom Caprice had seemed a duty,
Thou, who could'st trample and despise
The holiest chain of human ties

For him, the dear One in thine eyes,
Broke it no more.

Thy heart was withered to it's Core,
It's hopes, it's fears, it's feelings o'er:
Thy Blood grew Ice when his was shed,
And Thou the Vestal of the Dead.

Thy Lover died, as All

4.

Who truly love should die;

For such are worthy in the fight to fall
Triumphantly.

No Cuirass o'er that glowing heart
The deadly bullet turned apart:
Love had bestowed a richer Mail,
Like Thetis on her Son;

But hers at last was vain, and thine could fail-
The hero's and the lover's race was run.
Thy worshipped portrait, thy sweet face,
Without that bosom kept it's place

As Thou within.

Oh! enviously destined Ball!

Shivering thine imaged charms and all

Those Charms would win :

Together pierced, the fatal Stroke hath gored
Votary and Shrine, the adoring and the adored.
That Heart's last throb was thine, that blood
Baptized thine Image in it's flood,

And gushing from the fount of Faith
O'erflowed with Passion even in Death,