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PRINCIPAL

POSTHUMOUS POEMS.

1817-1822.

PRINCE ATHANASE.

A FRAGMENT.

1817.

PART I.

THERE was a youth who, as with toil and travel,

Had grown quite weak and grey before his time;

Nor any could the restless griefs unravel

Which burned within him, withering up his prime

And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.

Not his the load of any secret crime,

For naught of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same;-
Not his the thirst for glory or command

Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame ; 10
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,

Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,-Philosophy's accepted guest.

For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of naught in heaven or earth was he the
slave.

What sorrow strange, and shadowy, and unknown,

Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind ?

If with a human sadness he did groan,

He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find

In others' joy, when all their own is dead: He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief, And yet, unlike all others, it is said

That from such toil he never found relief;
Although a child of fortune and of power,
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief.

His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,

Pitying the tumult of their dark estate-
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse

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The strength of wealth or thought, to con

secrate

Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their

pride;

Nor did he hold from any man his dues,

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