HAPPY Love! where Love like this is found,
O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare
I've paced much this weary mortal round,
And sage experience bids me thus declare-
If heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
One cordial in this melancholy vale,
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair,
In other's arms breathe out the tender tale,
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.
HEY sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly:
All others are but vanity.
In heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of hell;
Earthly these passions of the Earth,
They perish where they have their birth;
But Love is indestructible:
Its holy flame for ever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth:
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
At times deceived, at times oppressed,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of Love is there.
H! not when hopes are brightest,
Is all Love's sweet enchantment known; Oh! not when hearts are lightest,
Is all fond woman's fervour shown.
But when life's clouds o'ertake us,
And the cold world is clothed in gloom;
When summer friends forsake us,
The rose of Love is best in bloom.
Love is no wandering vapour,
That lures astray with treacherous spark;
Love is no transient taper,
That lives an hour and leaves us dark:
But, like the lamp that lightens
The Greenland hut beneath the snow,
The bosom's home it brightens,
When all beside is chill below.
HAT art thou, Love? or who may thee define?
Where lies thy bourne of pleasure or of pain?
No sceptre, graved by Reason's hand, is thine,
Child of the moistened eye, and burning brain,
Of glowing fancy, and the fervid vein,
That soft on bed of roses loves to rest,
And crop the flower where lurks the deadly bane!
Oh, many a thorn those dear delights invest,
Child of the rosy cheek, and heaving snow-white breast!
Thou art the genial balm of virtuous youth,
And point'st where Honour waves her wreath on high:
Like the sweet breeze that wanders from the south,
Thou breath'st upon the soul, where embryos lie
Of new delights, the treasures of the sky!
Who knows thy trembling watch in bower of even ?
Thy earliest grateful tear and melting sigh?
Oh, never was to yearning mortal given
So dear delights as thine, thou habitant of heaven!
Oh, I will worship even before thy bust,
When my dimmed eye no more thy smile can see!
While this deserted bosom beats, it must
Still beat in unison with hope and thee!
For I have wept o'er perished ecstasy,
And o'er the fall of Beauty's early prime !
But I will dream of new delights to be,
When moon and stars have ceased their range sublime, And angels rung the knell of all-consuming time.
N joyous youth, what soul hath never known
Thought, feeling, taste, harmonious to its own!
Who hath not paused, while Beauty's pensive eye
Asked from his heart the homage of a sigh?
Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame.
The power of grace, the magic of a name?
There be, perhaps, who barren hearts avow,
Cold as the rocks on Torneo's hoary brow;
There be, whose loveless wisdom never failed,
In self-adoring pride securely mailed;
But triumph not, ye peace-enamoured few!
Fire, Nature, Genius, never dwelt with you!
For you no fancy consecrates the scene
Where rapture uttered vows, and wept between;
'Tis yours, unmoved, to severe and to meet;
No pledge is sacred, and no home is sweet!
Who that would ask a heart to dulness wed,
The waveless calm, the slumber of the dead!
No, the wild bliss of Nature needs alloy !
And fear and sorrow fan the fire of joy!
And say, without our hopes, without our fears,
Without the home that plighted love endears,
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh, what were man?—a world without a sun!
Till Hymen brought his love-delighted hour,
There dwelt no joy in Eden's rosy bower!
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