Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend. Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, When Youth itself survives young Love and Joy? Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, Death hath but little left him to destroy! Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy? XXIV. Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side, To gaze on Dian's wave-reflected sphere, The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride, None are so desolate but something dear, A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; XXV. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled. XXVI. But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; XXVII. More blest the life of godly Eremite, Watching at eve upon the giant height, Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been XXVIII. Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track As breezes rise and fall and billows swell, Till on some jocund morn-lo, land! and all is well. XXIX. But not in silence pass Calypso's isles, There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair goddess long hath ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride: Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed. XXX. Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone: Sweet Florence! could another ever share This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine : To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine, Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine. XXXI. Thus Harold deemed, as on that lady's eye Love kept aloof, albeit not far remote, Who knew his votary often lost and caught, Well deemed the little God his ancient sway was o'er. XXXII. Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze, Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law; Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames. XXXIII. Little knew she that seeming marble heart, And spread its snares licentious far and wide; Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside, And had he doated on those eyes so blue, XXXIV. Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast, Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes; Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes. XXXV. 'Tis an old lesson; Time approves it true, The paltry prize is hardly worth the cost: If, kindly cruel, early hope is crost, Still to the last it rankles, a disease, Not to be cured when love itself forgets to please. XXXVI. Away! nor let me loiter in my song, For we have many a mountain-path to tread, By pensive Sadness, not by Fiction, led |