With every gentle smile that crost
Your kindling cheek, you lighted home
Some feeling which my heart had lost
And peace which far had learned to roam.
'Twas then indeed so sweet to live,
Hope looked so new and Love so kind.
That, though I mourn, I yet forgive
The ruin they have left behind.
I could have loved you--oh, so well!--
The dream, that wishing boyhood knows,
Is but a bright, beguiling spell,
That only lives while passion glows.
But, when this early flush declines,
When the heart's sunny morning fleets,
You know not then how close it twines
Round the first kindred soul it meets.
Yes, yes, I could have loved, as one
Who, while his youth's enchantments fall,
Finds something dear to rest upon,
Which pays him for the loss of all.
TO .... ....
Never mind how the pedagogue proses,
You want not antiquity's stamp;
A lip, that such fragrance discloses,
Oh! never should smell of the lamp.
Old Cloe, whose withering kiss
Hath long set the Loves at defiance,
Now, done with the science of bliss,
May take to the blisses of science.
But for _you_ to be buried in books--
Ah, Fanny, they're pitiful sages,
Who could not in _one_ of your looks
Read more than in millions of pages.
Astronomy finds in those eyes
Better light than she studies above;
And Music would borrow your sighs
As the melody fittest for Love.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146