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For heaven in sunshine will requite
The kind- and thee the most of all.

X.

Then let the ties of baffled love

Be broken-thine will never break; Thy heart can feel—but will not move; Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.

XI.

And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fix'd in thee;-

And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert-ev'n to me.

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA. (1)

[

"THOUGH THE DAY OF MY DESTINY's," &c.]`

1.

THOUGH the day of my destiny's over,
And the star of my fate hath declined, (2)
Thy soft heart refused to discover

The faults which so many could find;
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted,
It shrunk not to share it with me,

And the love which my spirit hath painted
It never hath found but in thee.

II.

Then when nature around me is smiling,
The last smile which answers to mine,
I do not believe it beguiling,

Because it reminds me of thine;

(1) [These beautiful verses, so expressive of the writer's wounded feelings at the moment, were written in July, at the Campagne Diodati, near Geneva, and transmitted to England for publication, with some other pieces. "Be careful," he says, "in printing the stanzas beginning, "Though the day of my destiny's,' &c., which I think well of as a composition."-E]

(2) [In the original MS.—

"Though the days of my glory are over,

And the sun of my fame hath declined."—E]

And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,
If their billows excite an emotion,

It is that they bear me from thee.

III.

Though the rock of my last hope is shiver'd,
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is deliver'd
To pain it shall not be its slave.

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There is many a pang to pursue me:

They may crush, but they shall not contemn They may torture, but shall not subdue me "Tis of thee that I think not of them. (1)

IV.

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Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slander'd, thou never couldst shake,—
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor, mute, that the world might belie.(2)

(1) [Originally thus:

"There is many a pang to pursue me,

And many a peril to stem:

They may torture, but shall not subdue me;

They may crush, but they shall not contemn."-E]

(2) [MS." Though watchful, 'twas but to reclaim me, Nor, silent, to sanction a lie.”—E]

V.

Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it,
Nor the war of the many with one
If my soul was not fitted to prize it,

'Twas folly not sooner to shun:
And if dearly that error hath cost me,
And more than I once could foresee,
I have found that, whatever it lost me,
It could not deprive me of thee.

IV.

From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd,
Thus much I at least may recall,

It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd
Deserved to be dearest of all:

In the desert a fountain is springing,
In the wide waste there still is a tree,
And a bird in the solitude singing,
Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

July 24. 1816.

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