That cheated us in slumber only,

Without one friend to hear my woe,
I faint, I die beneath the blow.
That love had arrows well I knew;
Alas! I find them poison'd too.
Birds, yet in freedom, shun the net
Which love around your haunts hath set;
Or, circled by his fatal fire,

Your hearts shall burn, your hopes expire.
A bird of free and careless wing
Was I, through many a smiling spring;
But caught within the subtle snare,
I burn, and feebly flutter there.

Who ne'er have loved, and loved in vain,
Can neither feel nor pity pain,
The cold repulse, the look askance,
The lightning of Love's angry glance.

In flattering dreams I deem'd thee mine;
Now hope, and he who hoped, decline;
Like melting wax, or withering flower,
I feel my passion, and thy power.
My light of life! ah, tell me why
That pouting lip and alter'd eye?
My bird of love! my beauteous mate!

And art thou changed, and canst thou hate?
Mine eyes like wintry streams o'erflow:
What wretch with me would barter woe?
My bird! relent: one note could give
A charm, to bid thy lover live.

My curdling blood, my madd'ning brain,
In silent anguish I sustain ;

And still thy heart, without partaking
One pang, exults-while mine is breaking.
Pour me the poison; fear not thou!
Thou canst not murder more than now :
I've lived to curse my natal day,
And Love, that thus can lingering slay.
My wounded soul, my bleeding breast,
Can patience preach thee into rest?
Alas! too late, I dearly know
That joy is harbinger of woe.

THOU ART NOT FALSE, BUT THOU
ART FICKLE.

THOU art not false, but thou art fickle,
To those thyself so fondly sought;
The tears that thou hast forced to trickle
Are doubly bitter from that thought:
"Tis this which breaks the heart thou grievest,
Too well thou lov'st-too soon thou leavest.
The wholly false the heart despises,

And spurns deceiver and deceit ;
But she who not a thought disguises,
Whose love is as sincere as sweet,-
When she can change who loved so truly,
It feels what mine has felt so newly.
To dream of joy and wake to sorrow,
Is doom'd to all who love or live;
And if, when conscious on the morrow,
We scarce our fancy can forgive,

To leave the waking soul more lonely.

What must they feel whom no false vision, But truest, tenderest passion warm'd? Sincere, but swift in sad transition;

As if a dream alone had charm'd? Ah! sure such grief is fancy's scheming, And all thy change can be but dreaming!

ON BEING ASKED WHAT WAS THE 'ORIGIN OF LOVE.'

THE 'Origin of Love!'-Ah, why
That cruel question ask of me,
When thou may'st read in many an eye
He starts to life on seeing thee?

And shouldst thou seek his end to know:
My heart forebodes, my fears foresee,
He'll linger long in silent woe;
But live-until I cease to be.

REMEMBER HIM WHOM PASSION'S
POWER.

REMEMBER him whom passion's power
Severely, deeply, vainly proved:
Remember thou that dangerous hour,
When neither fell, though both were loved.
That yielding breast, that melting eye,

Too much invited to be bless'd;
That gentle prayer, that pleading sigh,
The wilder wish reproved, repress'd.
Oh! let me feel that all I lost

But saved thee all that conscience fears; And blush for every pang it cost

To spare the vain remorse of years.
Yet think of this when many a tongue,
Whost busy accents whisper blame,
Would do the heart that loved thee wrong,
And brand a nearly blighted name.

Think that, whate'er to others, thou
Hast seen each selfish thought subdued:
I bless thy purer soul ev'n now,

Ev'n now, in midnight solitude.

Oh, God! that we had met in time,
Our hearts as fond, thy hand more free;
When thou hadst loved without a crime,
And I been less unworthy thee!

Far may thy days, as heretofore,
From this our gaudy world be past!
And that too bitter moment o'er,
Oh! may such trial be thy last.
This heart, alas! perverted long,

Itself destroy'd might thee destroy :
To meet thee in the glittering throng,
Would wake Presumption's hope of joy.
Then to the things whose bliss or woe,
Like mine, is wild and worthless all,
That world resign-such scenes forego,
Where those who feel must surely fall.

Thy youth, thy charms, thy tenderness,
Thy soul from long seclusion pure;
From what ev'n here hath pass'd, may guess
What there thy bosom must endure.
Oh! pardon that imploring tear,

Since not by Virtue shed in vain,
My frenzy drew from eyes so dear;
For me they shall not weep again.

Though long and mournful must it be,

The thought that we no more may meet; Yet I deserve the stern decree,

And almost deem the sentence sweet. Still, had I loved thee less, my heart Had then less sacrificed to thine:

It felt not half so much to part

As if its guilt had made thee mine.

IMPROMPTU, IN REPLY TO A FRIEND. WHEN, from the heart where sorrow sits,

Her dusky shadow mounts too high,

And o'er the changing aspect flits,

And clouds the brow, or fills the eye;

At once such majesty with sweetness blending, I worship more, but cannot love thee less.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
'TU MI CHAMAS.'

IN moments to delight devoted,
'My life!' with tenderest tone, you cry;
Dear words! on which my heart had doted,
If youth could neither fade nor die.

To death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never;
Or change my life !' into 'my soul !'
Which, like my love, exists for ever.

ANOTHER VERSION.

You call me still your life.-Oh! change the

word

Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh: Say rather I'm your soul; more just that name, For, like the soul, my love can never die.

FROM THE FRENCH.

My thoughts their dungeon know too well; Back to my breast the wanderers shrink, And droop within their silent cell.

SONNETS TO GENEVRA.
I.

THINE eyes' blue tenderness, thy long fair hair,
And the wan lustre of thy features-caught
From contemplation-where serenely wrought,
Seems Sorrow's softness charm'd from its de-
spair-

Have thrown such speaking sadness in thine air. That-but I know thy blessed bosom fraught With mines of unalloy'd and stainless thought

I should have deem'd thee doom'd to earthly care. With such an aspect, by his colours blent,

When from his beauty-breathing pencil born (Except that thou hast nothing to repent), The Magdalen of Guido saw the mornSuch seem'st thou-but how much more excellent ! [scorn.

With nought Remorse can claim--nor Virtue

II.

THY cheek is pale with thought, but not from

woe:

And yet so lovely, that if Mirth could flush Its rose of whiteness with the brightest blush, My heart would wish away that ruder glow : And dazzle not thy deep blue eyes-but, oh! While gazing on them sterner eyes will gush, And into mine my mother's weakness rush, Soft as the last drops round heaven's airy bow. For, through thy long dark lashes low depending, The soul of melancholy Gentleness Gleams like a seraph from the sky descending, Above all pain, yet pitying all distress;

She makes her own face, and does not make her rhymes.

WINDSOR POETICS.

LINES COMPOSED ON THE OCCASION OF HIS
ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE REGENT
BEING SEEN STANDING BETWEEN THE
COFFINS OF HENRY VIII. AND CHARLES I.,
IN THE ROYAL VAULT AT WINDSOR.

FAMED for contemptuous breach of sacred ties,
By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies;
Between them stands another sceptred thing-
It moves, it reigns-in all but name, a king:
Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,
-In him the double tyrant starts to life:
Each royal vampire wakes to life again.
Justice and death have mix'd their dust in vain,
Ah, what can tombs avail, since these disgorge
The blood and dust of both-to mould a
George!

But these will be furnish'd again and again,
And at present my purpose is speed;
To see my manor as much as I may,

And watch that no souls shall be poach'd away.

'I have a state-coach at Carlton House,
A chariot in Seymour Place;
But they're lent to two friends, who make me
By driving my favourite pace: [amends,
And they handle their reins with such a grace,
I have something for both at the end of their race.

'So now for the earth to take my chance :'
Then up to the earth sprung he;
And making a jump from Moscow to France,
He stepp'd across the sea,

And rested his hoof on a turnpike road,
No very great way from a bishop's abode.

Put first as he flew, I forgot to say
That he hover'd a moment upon his way,
To look upon Leipsic plain;

And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare,
And so soft to his ear was the cry of despair,
That he perch'd on a mountain of slain ;
And he gazed with delight from its growing
height,

Nor often on earth had he seen such a sight,
Nor his work done half as well: [dead,
For the field ran so red with the blood of the
That it blush'd like the waves of hell!
Then loudly, and wildly, and long laugh'd he:
'Methinks they have here little need of me!'

But the softest note that soothed his ear
Was the sound of a widow sighing;
And the sweetest sight was the icy tear,
Which horror froze in the blue eye clear
Of a maid by her lover lying-
As round her fell her long fair hair;
And she look'd to heaven with that frenzied air,

Which seem'd to ask if a God were there!
And, stretch'd by the wall of a ruin'd hut,
With its hollow cheek, and eyes half shut,
A child of famine dying:

And the carnage begun, when resistance is done,
And the fall of the vainly flying!

But the Devil has reach'd our cliffs so white,
And what did he there, I pray?
If his eyes were good, he but saw by night
What we see every day:

But he made a tour, and kept a journal
Of all the wondrous sights nocturnal,
And he sold it in shares to the Men of the Row,
Who bid pretty well-but they cheated him,
though!

The Devil first saw, as he thought, the Mail,
Its coachman and his coat;

So instead of a pistol he cock'd his tail,
And seized him by the throat :
Aha! quoth he, what have we here?
"Tis a new barouche, and an ancient peer!'

So he sat him on his box again,

And bade him have no fear,

But be true to his club, and stanch to his rein, His brothel, and his beer;

'Next to seeing a lord at the council board, I would rather see him here.'

The Devil gat next to Westminster,

And he turn'd to the room' of the Commons: But he heard, as he purposed to enter in there, That the Lords' had received a summons; And he thought, as a 'quondam aristocrat,' He might peep at the peers, though to hear them were flat;

own,

And he walk'd up the House so like one of our
[throne.
That they say that he stood pretty near the
He saw the Lord Liverpool seemingly wise,
The Lord Westmoreland certainly silly,
And Johnny of Norfolk-a man of some size-
And Chatham, so like his friend Billy;
And he saw the tears in Lord Eldon's eyes,
Because the Catholics would not rise,
In spite of his prayers and his prophecies;
And he heard-which set Satan himself a star-
ing-
[ing.

A certain Chief Justice say something like swearAnd the Devil was shock'd-and quoth he, 'I must go,

For I find we have much better manners below: If thus he harangues when he passes my border, I shall hint to friend Moloch to call him to order.'

Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace, Were those hours-can their joy or their bitterness cease? chain, We repent, we abjure, we will break from our We will part, we will fly to-unite it again! Oh! thine be the gladness, and mine be the guilt! Forgive me, adored one!-forsake, if thou wilt; But the heart which is thine shall expire undebased, [may'st.

And man shall not break it-whatever thou And stern to the haughty, but humble to thee, This soul in its bitterest blackness shall be ; And our days seem as swift, and our moments more sweet,

[feet.

With thee by my side, than with worlds at our

One sigh of thy sorrow, one look of thy love, Shall turn me or fix, shall reward or reprove And the heartless may wonder at all I resign-→ Thy lip shall reply, not to them, but to mine.

If he, that vain old man, whom truth admits
Heir of his father's crown, and of its wits,
If his corrupted eye, and wither'd heart,
Could with thy gentle image bear depart;
That tasteless shame be his, and ours the grief
To gaze on Beauty's band without its chief:
Yet comfort still one selfish thought imparts,
We lose the portrait, but preserve our hearts.
What can his vaulted gallery now disclose?
A garden with all flowers-except the rose ;-
A fount that only wants its living stream;
A night, with every star, save Dian's beam.
Lost to our eyes the present forms shall be,
That turn from tracing them to dream of thee;
And more on that recall'd resemblance pause,
Than all he shall not force on our applause.

Long may thy yet meridian lustre shine,
With all that Virtue asks of Homage thine:
The symmetry of youth, the grace of mien,
The eye that gladdens, and the brow serene;
The glossy darkness of that clustering hair,
Which shades, yet shows that forehead more
than fair!
[throws
Each glance that wins us, and the life that
A spell which will not let our looks repose,
But turn to gaze again, and find anew
Some charm that well rewards another view.
These are not lessen'd, these are still as bright,
Albeit too dazzling for a dotard's sight;

And those must wait till every charm is gone,
To please the paltry heart that pleases none;-
That dull cold sensualist, whose sickly eye
In envious dimness pass'd thy portrait by;
Who rack'd his little spirit to combine
It's hate of Freedom's loveliness, and thine.

ON THE DEATH OF SIR PETER PARKER, BART.
THERE is a tear for all that die,

A mourner o'er the humblest grave;
But nations swell the funeral cry,
And triumph weeps above the brave.
For them is Sorrow's purest sigh

O'er ocean's heaving bosom sent:
In vain their bones unburied lie,
All earth becomes their monument !
A tomb is theirs on every page,

An epitaph on every tongue :
The present hours, the future age,

For them bewail, to them belong. For them the voice of festal mirth

Grows hush'd, their name the only sound; While deep Remembrance pours to Worth The goblet's tributary round.

A theme to crowds that knew them not,
Lamented by admiring foes,

Who would not share their glorious lot?
Who would not die the death they chose?
And, gallant Parker! thus enshrined
Thy life, thy fall, thy fame shall be ;
And early valour, glowing, find

A model in thy memory.

But there are breasts that bled with thee
In woe, that glory cannot quell;
And shuddering hear of victory,

Where one so dear, so dauntless, fell. Where shall they turn to mourn thee less? When cease to hear thy cherish'd name? Time cannot teach forgetfulness,

While Grief's full heart is fed by Fame.