FROM these lone shades and ever-gloomy bowers,
Once the dear scenes of Henry's softer hours!
What tender strains of passion can impart

The pangs of absence to an amorous heart!
Far, far too faint the powers of language prove,
Language that slow interpreter of love!

Souls pair'd like ours, like ours to union wrought,
Converse by silent sympathy of thought;

O then, by that mysterious art, divine
The wild impatience of my breast by thine!
And, to conceive what I would say to thee,

Conceive, my Love, what thou wouldst say to met

As in the tenderness of soul I sigh,

Methinks I hear thy tender soul reply;

And as in thought, o'er heaps of heroes slain,
I trace thy progress on the fatal plain,
Perhaps thy thought explores me thro' the grove,
And, softening, steals an interval of love;
In the deep covert of a bowering shade
Describes my posture-languishingly laid!
Now, sadly solac'd with the murmuring springs,
Now, melting into tears, the softest things!
And how the feign'd ideas all agree!

So bowers the shade, so melt my tears for thee!
Here, as in Eden, once we blissful lay,

How oft night stole, unheeded, on the day!

Our soft-breath'd raptures charm'd the listening grove,

And all was harmony, for all was love!

But hark! the trumpet sounds! see discords rise! 'Tis honor calls; from me my Henry flies! Honor to him, more bright than Rosamonda's eyes ! Not thus my honor with his passion strove,

His sighs I pitied, and indulg'd his love:

He then cried, "honor was an empty name,
"And love a sweeter recompense than fame."

Oh! had I liv'd in some obscure retreat, Securely fair, and innocently sweet;

How had I bless'd some humble shepherd's arms! How kept my fame as spotless as my charms!

Then hadst thou ne'er beheld these eyes of mine,
Nor they bewail'd the fatal power of thine!
Dear fatal power! to me for ever dear
Fix'd in my tender breast, and rooted there!
For ever in my tender breast remain-
And be for ever a delightful pain!

With what surprize those glories first I view'd, That in one moment my whole heart subdued! With such resistless beams, so fierce they shone, Not such the dazzling radiance of thy crown! Sent from thy crown I never felt a dart ; The lover, not the monarch, won my heart: Nor e'er the monarch with such charms appears, As when the lover's soften'd dress he wears: As when he, silent, deigns my breast to seek, And looks such language as no tongue can speak.

Whene'er my crimes (if love a crime can be,

If 'tis a crime to live, and die for thee !)
In hideous forms arise, and cloud my soul,
One thought of Henry can that gloom control:
No more my breast alternate passions move,
The frosts of honor melt before the fires of love.

Again I must repeat that fatal hour,

Which snatch'd my Henry from his Woodstock bower;

When mad Bellona, with tumultuous cries,

The hero rouz'd, and drown'd the lover's sighs.

Stretch'd on my downy couch at ease I lay,
And sought by reading to beguile the day ;
With amorous strains I sooth'd a grateful fire,
And all the woman glow'd with soft desire.
"Till, as I wish'd, I heard the vocal breeze
Proclaim my Henry rustling thro' the trees;
O'erjoy'd, I ran to meet thy longing arms,
And taste a dear remembrance of thy charms;
But soon I saw some sad conceal'd surprize,
Fade on thy cheeks, and languish on thine eyes;
Thro' each dissembled smile a sorrow stole,
And whisper'd out the secret of thy soul.
What this could mean uncertain to divine;
No fault I knew, yet fear'd some fault was mine.
But soon thy love dispell'd those airy fears,
Dispell'd alas !-but brought too solid cares.
For as with hands, entwin'd in hands, we walk'd,
Of love, and hapless lovers, still thou talk'd:
Thy tears of pity answer'd each sad moan,
And in their seeming miseries wept thy own.
"I cannot leave her!"-I o'erheard thee say,-
Pierc'd to the soul, I sunk, and died
away.
What art restor'd me, thou alone canst tell,
For thy kind arms embrac'd me as I fell.
My opening eyes fix'd on thy beauties hung,
And my ears drank the cordial of thy tongue.
Again my thoughts return with killing pain,
Within thy arms I sink, and swoon again:
Again thou dost my sweet physician prove,
From death to life alternately I move,