And ever as the sad lament Would thus her lips divide, Her lips, like sister roses bent By passing gales, elastic sent Their blushes from the tide. While mournful o'er her pictured face Did then her glances steal, She seemed, she thought, a marble Grace, To enslave with love the human race, But ne'er that love to feel. " Ah, what avail those eyes replete With charms without a name! Alas! no kindred rays they meet, To kindle by collision sweet Of mutual love the flame! $ 0, 't is the worst of cruel things, This solitary state! Prepares to join his mate. “ The little glowworm sheds her light, Nor sheds her light in vain,That still her tiny lover's sight Amid the darkness of the night May trace her o'er the plain. “ All living nature seems to move By sympathy divine, - Did all their hearts entwine! “ My heart alone of all my kind No love can ever warm : Ne'er breathes on human form; “ A blank, embodied space, that knows No changes in its reign, In ridges o'er the plain." Thus plained the maid; and now her eyes Slow lifting from the tide, Mute standing by her side. “Forbear, O lovely maid, forbear!" The youth enamoured cried, « Nor with Arabia's waste compare The heart of one so young and fair, To every charm allied. “ Or, if Arabia, — rather say, Where some delicious spring Remurmurs to the leaves that play 'Mid palm and date and floweret gay On zephyr's frolic wing. “ And now, methinks, I cannot deem The picture else but true; - . a Thus spake the youth; and then his tongue Such converse sweet distilled, And all her soul he filled. He told her of his cruel fate, Condemned alone to rove Yet never once to love. And then from many a poet's page The blest reverse he proved, How sweet to pass life's pilgrimage, From purple youth to sere old age, Aye loving and beloved! Here ceased the youth; but still his words Did o'er her fancy play ; That welcomes in the day. The sympathetic chord she feels Soft thrilling in her soul; She seems to hear it roll. Her altered heart, of late so drear, Then seemed a faery land, And frolic hand in hand. But who shall paint her crimson blush, Nor think his hand of stone, Her heart was not her own! а The happy Lindor, with a look That every hope confessed, In silence to his breast. Myrtilla felt the spreading flame, Yet knew not how to chide; , No longer, then, ye fair, complain, And call the Fates unkind; The high, the low, the meek, the vain, Shall each a sympathetic swain, Another self, shall find. |