Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Why bade ye else, ye powers! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your bless'd abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods:
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age;
Dull sullen prisoners in the body's cage;
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres;
Like eastern kings, a lazy state they keep,
And, close confined to their own palace, sleep.
From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,
And separate from their kindred dregs below:
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.
But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou mean deserter of thy brother's blood!
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death!
Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball,
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall:
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates:
There passengers shall stand, and pointing, say,
(While the long funerals blacken all the way,)
Lo! these were they, whose souls the furies steel'd,
And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.'
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.
What can atone (oh ever injured shade!)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier:
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd and by strangers mourn'd!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dress'd
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by thy reliques made.
So, peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honour'd once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee:
Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung;
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue :
E'en he whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the generous tear he pays;
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart!
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The muse forgot, and thou beloved no more!
To Mr. Addison's Tragedy of Cato.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold: .
For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age:
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept,
And foes to virtue wonder'd how they wept.
Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move
The hero's glory, or the virgin's love;
In pitying love, we but our weakness show,
And wild ambition well deserves its woe.
Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause,
Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws;
He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes.
Virtue confess'd in human shape he draws,
What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was :
No common object to your sight displays,
But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys,
A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
And greatly falling with a falling state.
While Cato gives his little senate laws,
What bosom beats not in his country's cause?
Who sees him act, but envies every deed?
Who hears him groan, and does not wish to bleed?
E'en when proud Cæsar, 'midst triumphal cars,
of wars,
pomp
The spoils of nations, and the
Ignobly vain, and impotently great,
Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state;
As her dead father's reverend image pass'd,
The pomp was darken'd, and the day o'ercast;
The triumph ceased, tears gush'd from every eye;
The world's great victor pass'd unheeded by:
Her last good man dejected Rome adored,
Aud honour'd Cæsar's less than Cato's sword.
Britons, attend: be worth like this approved,
And show, you have the virtue to be moved.
With honest scorn the first famed Cato view'd
Rome learning arts from Greece, whom she subdued
Your scene precariously subsists too long
On French translation and Italian song:
Dare to have sense yourselves; assert the stage,
Be justly warm'd with your own native rage:
Such plays alone should win a British ear
As Cato's self had not disdain'd to hear.
TO MR. ROWE'S JANE SHORE.
Designed for Mrs. Oldfield.
PRODIGIOUS this! the frail-one of our play
From her own sex should mercy find to-day!
You might have held the pretty head aside,
Peep'd in your fans, been serious, thus, and cried,
'The play may pass-but that strange creature Shore
I can't-indeed now-I so hate a whore!'-
Just as a blockhead rubs his thoughtless skull,
And thanks his stars he was not born a fool;
So from a sister sinner you shall hear,
'How strangely you expose yourself my dear!'
But let me die, all raillery apart,
Our sex are still forgiving at their heart;
And did not wicked custom so contrive,
We'd be the best, good-natured things alive.
There are, 'tis true, who tell another tale,
That virtuous ladies envy while they rail;
Such rage without betrays the fire within ;
In some close corner of the soul, they sin;
Still hoarding up, most scandalously nice,
Amidst their virtues a reserve of vice.
The godly dame, who fleshly failings damns,
Scolds with her maid, or with her chaplain crams:
Would you enjoy soft nights and solid dinners?
Faith, gallants, board with saints, and bed with sinners.
Well, if our author in the wife offends,
He has a husband that will make amends:
He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving,
And sure such kind good creatures may be living
In days of old they pardon'd breach of vows;
Stern Cato's self was no relentless spouse :
SAY, lovely youth, that dost my heart command,
Can Phaon's eyes forget his Sappho's hand?
Must then her name the wretched writer prove,
To thy remembrance lost, as to thy love?
Ask not the cause that I new numbers choose,
The lute neglected, and the Lyrie Muse.
Love taught my tears in sadder notes to flow,
And tuned my heart to elegies of woe.
I burn, I burn, as when through ripen'd corn
By driving winds the spreading flames are borne.
Phaon to Etna's scorching fields retires,
While I consume with more than Etna's fires!
No more my soul a charm in music finds,
Music has charms alone for peaceful minds:
Soft scenes of solitude no more can please,
Love enters there, and I'm my own disease.
No more the Lesbian dames my passion move,
Once the dear objects of my guilty love;
All other loves are lost in only thine,
Ah, youth ungrateful to a flame like mine!
Whom would not all those blooming charms surprise,
Those heavenly looks, and dear deluding eyes?
The harp and bow would you like Phœbus bear,
A brighter Phoebus Phaon might appear:
Would you with ivy wreathe your flowing hair,
Not Bacchus' self with Phaon could compare :
Plu-Plutarch, what's his name, that writes his life? Yet Phœbus loved, and Bacchus felt the flame,
Tells us, that Cato dearly loved his wife :
Yet if a friend, a night or so, should need her,
He'd recommend her as a special breeder.
To lend a wife, few here would scruple make;
But, pray, which of you all would take her back?
Though with the stoic chief our stage may ring,
The stoic husband was the glorious thing.
The man had courage, was a sage, 'tis true,
And loved his country-but what's that to you?
Those strange examples ne'er were made to fit ye,
But the kind cuckold might instruct the city.
There many an honest man may copy Cato,
Who ne'er saw naked sword, or look'd in Plato.
If, after all, you think it a disgrace,
That Edward's miss thus perks it in your face;
To see a piece of failing flesh and blood,
In all the rest so impudently good;
Faith, let the modest matrons of the town
One Daphne warm'd, and one the Cretan dame;
Nymphs that in verse no more could rival me,
Than e'en those gods contend in charms with thee
The muses teach me all their softest lays,
And the wide world resounds with Sappho's praise
Though great Alcæus more sublimely sings,
And strikes with bolder rage the sounding strings,
No less renown attends the moving lyre,
Which Venus tunes, and all her loves inspire;
To me what nature has in charms denied,
Is well by wit's more lasting flames supplied.
Though short my stature, yet my name extends
To heaven itself, and earth's remotest ends.
Brown as I am, an Ethiopian dame
Inspired young Perseus with a generous flame;
Turtles and doves of different hues unite,
And glossy jet is pair'd with shining white.
If to no charms thou wilt thy heart resign,
Come here in crowds, and stare the strumpet down. But such as merit, such as equal thine,
SAPPHO TO PHAON.
From the fifteenth of Ovid's Epistles.
By none, alas! by none thou canst be moved : Phaon alone by Phaon must be loved! Yet once thy Sappho could thy cares employ; Once in her arms you centred all your joy: No time the dear remembrance can remove, For, oh! how vast a memory has love! Phaon, a youth of exquisite beauty, was deeply ena- My music, then you could for ever hear, moured of Sappho, a lady of Lesbos, from whom he met And all my words were music to your ear. with the tenderest returns of passion: but his affec- You stopp'd with kisses my enchanting tongue, tion afterwards decaying, he left her and sailed for And found my kisses sweeter than my song. Sicily. She, unable to bear the loss of her lover. In all I pleased, but most in what was best;
hearkened to all the mad suggestions of despair; and
seeing no other remedy for her present miseries, re- And the last joy was dearer than the rest. solved to throw herself into the sea, from Leucate, a Then with each word, each glance, each motion fired, promontory of Epirus, which was thought a cure in You still enjoy'd, and yet you still desired, cases of obstinate love, and therefore had obtained the Till all dissolving in the trance we lay, name of the Lover's Leap. "But before she ventured And in tumultuous raptures died away. upon this last step, entertaining still some fond hopes The fair Sicilians now thy soul inflame: that she might reclaim her inconstant, she wrote him Why was I born, ye gods! a Lesbian dame? this epistle, in which she gives him a strong picture] of her distress and misery, occasioned by his absence: But ah, beware, Sicilian nymphs! nor boast and endeavours by all the artful insinuations and That wandering heart which I so lately lost; moving expressions she is mistress of, to sooth him to Nor be with all those tempting words abused, softness and mutual feeling. (ANON.) Those tempting words were all to Sappho used.
And you that rule Sicilia's happy plains,
Have pity, Venus, on your poet's pains!
Shall fortune still in one sad tenor run,
And still increase the woes so soon begun ?
Inured to sorrow from my tender years,
My parent's ashes drank my early tears:
My brother next, neglecting wealth and fame,
Ignobly burn'd in a destructive flame;
An infant daughter late my griefs increased,
And all a mother's cares distract my breast.
Alas! what more could fate itself impose,
But thee, the last and greatest of my woes?
No more my robes in waving purple flow,
Nor on my hand the sparkling diamonds glow;
No more my locks, in ringlets curl'd, diffuse
The costly sweetness of Arabian dews;
Nor braids of gold the varied tresses bind,
That fly disordered with the wanton wind:
For whom should Sappho use such arts as these?
He's gone, whom only she desired to please!
Cupid's light darts my tender bosom move,
Still is there cause for Sappho still to love:
So from my birth the Sisters fixed my doom,
And gave to Venus all my life to come;
Or, while my muse in melting notes complains,
My yielding heart keeps measure to my strains.
By charms like thine, which all my soul have won,
Who might not-ah! who would not be undone ?
For those Aurora Cephalus might scorn,
And with fresh blushes paint the conscious morn :
For those might Cynthia lengthen Phaon's sleep,
And bid Endymion nightly tend his sheep:
Venus for those had rapt thee to the skies,
But Mars on thee might look with Venus eyes.
O scarce a youth, yet scarce a tender boy!
O useful time for lovers to employ !
Pride of thy age and glory of thy race,
Come to these arms, and melt in this embrace!
The vows you never will return, receive ;.
And take at least the love you will not give.
See, while I write, my words are lost in tears!
The less my sense, the more my love appears.
Sure 'twas not much to bid one kind adieu;
(At least to feign was never hard to you!)
'Farewell, my Lesbian love,' you might have said;
Or coldly thus, Farewell, oh Lesbian maid'!'
No tear did you, no parting kiss receive,
Nor knew I then how much I was to grieve.
No lover's gift your Sappho could confer,
And wrongs and woes were all you left with her,
No charge I gave you, and no charge could give,
But this,' Be mindful of your loves, and live.'
Now by the Nine, those powers adored by me,
And Love, the god that ever waits on thee,
When first I heard (from whom I hardly knew)
That you were fled, and all my joys with you,
Like some sad statue, speechless, pale I stood,
Grief chill'd my breast, and stopp'd my freezing blood;
No sigh to rise, no tear had power to flow,
Fix'd in a stupid lethargy of wo:
But when its way the impetuous passion found,
I rend my tresses, and my breast I wound;
I rave; then weep; I curse, and then complain;
Now swell to rage, now melt in tears again.
Not fiercer pangs distract the mournful dame,
Whose first-born infant feeds the funeral flame.
My scornful brother with a smile appears,
msults my woes, and triumphs in my tears,
|His hated image ever haunts my eyes;
And why this grief? thy daughter lives,' he cries Stung with my love, and furious with despair, All torn my garments, and my bosom bare, My woes, thy crimes, I to the world proclaim: Such inconsistent things are love and shame! 'Tis thou art all my care and my delight, My daily longing, and my dream by night. O night, more pleasing than the brightest day, When fancy gives what absence takes away, And dress'd in all its visionary charms, Restores my fair deserter to my arms! Then round your neck in wanton wreaths I twine; Then you, methinks, as fondly circle mine:
A thousand tender words I hear and speak;
A thousand melting kisses give and take:
Then fiercer joys: I blush to mention these,
Yet, while I blush, confess how much they please.
But when, with day, the sweet delusions fly,
And all things wake to life and joy, but I;
As if once more forsaken, I complain,
And close my eyes to dream of you again;
Then frantic rise, and like some fury rove
Through lonely plains, and through the silent grove :
As if the silent grove, and lonely plains,
That knew my pleasures, could relieve my pains.
I view the grotto, once the scene of love,
The rocks around, the hanging roofs above,
That charm'd me more, with native moss o'ergrown,
Than Phrygian marble, or the Parian stone.
I find the shades that veil'd our joys before!
But, Phaon gone, those shades delight no more.
Here the press'd herbs with bending tops betray
Where oft entwined in amorous folds we lay;
I kiss that earth which once was pressed by you,
And all with tears the withering herbs bedew.
For thee the fading trees appear to mourn,
And birds defer their songs till thy return:
Night shades the grove, and all in silence lie,
All but the mournful Philomel and I :
With mournful Philomel I join my strain,
Of Tereus she, of Phaon I complain.
A spring there is, whose silver waters show,
Clear as a glass, the shining sands below;
A flowery lotos spreads its arms above,
Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove:
Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,
Watch'd by the sylvan genius of the place.
Here as I lay, and swell'd with tears the flood,
Before my sight a watery virgin stood:
She stood and cried, 'O you that love in vain;
Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main:
There stands a rock, from whose impending steep
Apollo's fane surveys the rolling deep;
There injured lovers, leaping from above,
Their flames extinguish, and forget to love.
Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn'd,
In vain he loved: relentless Pyrrha scorn'd:
But when from hence he plunged into the main,
Deucalion scorn'd, and Pyrrha loved in vain.
Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw
Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!"
She spoke, and vanish'd with the voice-I rise,
And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes
I go, ye nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove;
How much I fear, but ah, how much I love!
I go, ye nymphs! where furious love inspires;
Let female fears submit to female fires.
To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon's hate,
And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.
Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow,
And softly lay me on the waves below!
And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain,
Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main,
Nor let a lover's death the guiltless flood profane!
On Phœbus' shrine my harp I'll then bestow,
And this inscription shall be plac'd below;
'Here she who sung, to him who did inspire,
Sappho to Phoebus consecrates her lyre;
What suits with Sappho, Phœbus, suits with thee,
The gift, the giver, and the god agree.'
But why, alas! relentless youth, ah why
To distant seas must tender Sappho fly?
Thy charms than those may far more powerful be,
And Phœbus' self is less a god to me.
Ah! canst thou doom me to the rocks and sea,
O far more faithless, and more hard than they?
Ah! canst thou rather see this tender breast
Dash'd on these rocks, than to thy bosom press'd?
This breast, which once, in vain! you liked so well;
Where the loves play'd, and where the muses dwell?
Alas! the muses now no more inspire;
Untuned my lute, and silent is my lyre;
My languid numbers have forgot to flow,
And fancy sinks beneath a weight of wo.
Ye Lesbian virgins, and ye Lesbian dames,
Themes of my verse, and objects of my flames,
No more your groves with my glad songs shall ring,
No more these hands shall touch the trembling
string:
(My Phaon 's fled, and I those arts resign,
Wretch that I am, to call that Phaon mine!)
Return, fair youth, return, and bring along
Joy to my soul, and vigour to my song:
Absent from thee, the poet's flame expires;
But ah! how fiercely burn the lover's fires!
Gods! can no prayers, no sighs, no numbers move
One savage heart, or teach it how to love?
The winds my prayers, my sighs, my numbers bear,
The flying winds have lost them all in air!
Oh when, alas! shall more auspicious gales
To these fond eyes restore thy welcome sails?
If you return-ah, why these long delays?
Poor Sappho dies while careless Phaon stays.
O, launch thy bark, nor fear the watery plain;
Venus for thee shall smooth her native main.
O, launch thy bark, secure of prosperous gales;
Cupid for thee shall spread the swelling sails.
If you will fly-yet ah! what cause can be,
Too cruel youth, that you should fly from me?)
If not from Phaon I must hope for ease,
Ah let me seek it from the raging seas:
To raging seas unpitied I'll remove,. 1
And either cease to live, or cease to love!
their days to religion. It was many years after this
separation, that a letter of Abelard's to a friend,
which contained the history of his misfortune, fell
into the hands of Eloisa. This awakening all her
tenderness, occasioned those celebrated letters (out of
which the following is partly extracted) which give so
lively a picture of the struggles of grace and nature,
virtue and passion.
IN these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heavenly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns,
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins.?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love!-From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.
Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips, in holy silence seal'd.,
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mix'd with God's, his loved idea lies:
O, write it not, my hand-the name appears
Already written-wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays;
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn;
Shrines where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep;
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep;
Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heaven's while Abelard has part:
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor prayers nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears for ages taught to flow in vain.
Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes;
Oh, name for ever sad! for ever dear!
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of wo:
Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quench'd the unwilling flame;
There died the best of passions, love and fame.
Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this power away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare ;
Love but demands what else were shed in prayer;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue; }
To read and weep is all they now can do.
Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief:
Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.
Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
Abelard and Eloisa flourished in the twelfth century;
they were two of the most distinguished persons of
their age in learning and beauty, but for nothing
more famous than for their unfortunate passion. And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole!
After a long course of calamities they retired each to
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Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,
a several convent, and consecrated the remainder of When love approach'd me under friendship's name.
My fancy form'd the of angelic kind,
Some emanation of the All-beauteous Mind,
Those smiling eyes, attempering every ray,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gazed: Heaven listen'd while you'sung,,
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.
From lips like those what precept fail'd to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love :
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,
Nor wish'd an angel whom I loved a man.
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see,
Nor envy them that heaven I lose for thee.
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How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said;
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;
Before true passion all those views remove;
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to love?
The jealous god, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires,
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn them all:
Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove ;
No, make me mistress to the man I love.
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Oh, happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature law;
All then is full, possessing and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
E'en thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me.
Alas, how changed! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloïse? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard had opposed the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain :
The crime was common, common be the pain.
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppress'd,
Let tears and burning blushes speak the rest.
Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,
The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale;
Heaven scarce believed the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the cross my eyes were fix'd, but you:
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call;
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Come, with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.
Still on that breast enamour'd let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press'd;
Give all thou canst-and let me dream the rest.
Ah, no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes :
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.
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Ah! think at least thy flock deserves thy care, Plants of thy hand, and children of thy prayer. From the false world in early youth they fled, By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led, You raised these hallow'd walls; the desert smiled And paradise was open'd in the wild. No weeping orphan saw his father's stores Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors; No silver saints, by dying misers given, Here bribe the rage of ill-requited Heaven; But such plain roofs as piety could raise, And only vocal with the Maker's praise. In these lone walls (their days eternal bound) These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd, Where awful arches make a noon-day night, And the dim windows shed a solemn light, Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray, And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day: But now no face divine contentment wears; "Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears. See how the force of others' prayers I try, (Oh pious fraud of amorous charity!) But why should I on others' prayers depend? Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend! Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move, And all those tender names in one, thy love! The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclined, Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind. The wandering streams that shine between the hills, The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, The dying gales that pant upon the trees, The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze; No more these scenes my meditation aid, Or lull to rest the visionary maid: But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves, Black melancholy sits, and round her throws A death-like silence, and a dread repose; Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, Shades every flower, and darkens every green, Deepens the murmur of the falling floods, And breathes a browner horror on the woods. Yet here for ever, ever must I stay; Sad proof how well a lover can obey! Death, only death, can break the lasting chain; And here, e'en then, shall my cold dust remain; Here all its frailties, all its flames resign, And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.
Ah, wretch! believed the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heaven! but whence arose that prayer?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
E'en here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to heaven, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
"Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love the offender, yet detest the offence?
How the dear object from the crime rernove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierced, so lost as mine!
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