What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish?
A fav'rite has no friend!
Ye distant spires, ye antique towers.
Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!
Ah, fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow.
They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy.
Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast.
Alas! regardless of their doom,
The little victims play;
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day.
Ah, tell them they are men!
And moody madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.
To each his suff'rings; all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,--
The tender for another's pain,
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate,
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'T is folly to be wise.
Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and tort'ring hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take.
Glance their many-twinkling feet.
O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.
Her track, where'er the goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and gen'rous shame,
Th' unconquerable mind, and freedom's holy flame.
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic tears.
He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living throne, the sapphire blaze,
Where angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov'ring o'er,
Scatters from her pictured urn
Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the good how far,--but far above the great.
Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Though fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air.
To high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellyn's lay.
Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes;
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.
Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward's race.
Give ample room and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows;
While proudly riding o'er the azure realm
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes,
Youth on the prow, and Pleasure at the helm;
Regardless of the sweeping whirlwind's sway,
That hush'd in grim repose expects his evening prey.