And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining one by one
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts so lately mingled seem
Like broken clouds,--or like the stream
That smiling left the mountain's brow
As tho' its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part for ever.
Oh, you that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound,
As in the Fields of Bliss above
He sits with flowerets fettered round;--
Loose not a tie that round him clings.
Nor ever let him use his wings;
For even an hour, a minute's flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light.
Like that celestial bird whose nest
Is found beneath far Eastern skies,
Whose wings tho' radiant when at rest
Lose all their glory when he flies![292]
Some difference of this dangerous kind,--
By which, tho' light, the links that bind
The fondest hearts may soon be riven;
Some shadow in Love's summer heaven,
Which, tho' a fleecy speck at first
May yet in awful thunder burst;--
Such cloud it is that now hangs over
The heart of the Imperial Lover,
And far hath banisht from his sight
His NOURMAHAL, his Haram's Light!
Hence is it on this happy night
When Pleasure thro' the fields and groves
Has let loose all her world of loves
And every heart has found its own
He wanders joyless and alone
And weary as that bird of Thrace
Whose pinion knows no resting place.
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