SOLILOQUY TO LOVE.
O thou, or fiend, or angel, by what name
Shall I address thee? how express thy powers?
Strange compound of extremes! of heat and cold,
Of hope and fear, of pleasure and of pain!
Nought can escape thy prying scrutiny;
Wretched, should aught but thwart thine ardent wish;
And oh! how ravish’d if thou mark’st one glance,
Which tells the latent longings of the soul!
In that high fever, the delirious brain
Coins gaudy phantoms of celestial bliss,
Of bliss that never comes—for now, e’en now
From airy joys he wakes to solid pain.
Quick to his sight up springs, in long array,
A tribe of horrid ills—the cold reply;
The unanswer’d question; the assenting nod
Of dull Civility; the careless look
Of blank Indifference; the chilling frown
That freezes at the heart; the stony eye
Of fixt Disdain; or more tormenting gaze
Bent on another. These, with all the train
Of fears and jealousies that wait on Love,
Are no imagin’d griefs; no fancied ills
These; or, if fancied, worse than real woes
Such art thou, Love; then who, that once has known
Thy countless rocks and sands that lurk beneath,
Would ever tempt thy smiling surface more?
Long toss’d on stormy seas of hopes and fears,
How willingly at last my wearied soul
Would seek a shelter in forgetfulness!
Oh! bland Forgetfulness, Love’s sweetest balm,
Through all my veins thy pow’rs infuse; close up
Each avenue to Love; purge off the lime
That clogs his spirit, which fain would wing its flight
To Sense, to Reason, Liberty and Peace.
NEW-YORK: Printed by JOHN BULL, No. 115, Cherry-Street, where every Kind of Printing work is executed with the utmost Accuracy and Dispatch.—Subscriptions for this Magazine (at 2s. per month) are taken in at the Printing-Office, and by E. MITCHELL, Bookseller, No. 9, Maiden-Lane.