DISAPPOINTMENT.
Hope tells a flattering tale,
Delusive, vain, and hollow,
Ah, let not Hope prevail,
Lest disappointment follow.
The Universal Songster. MISS WROTHER.
As distant prospects please us, but when near
We find but desert rocks and fleeting air.
The Dispensatory, Canto III. SIR S. GARTH.
We're charmed with distant views of happiness,
But near approaches make the prospect less.
Against Enjoyment. T. YALDEN.
The wretched are the faithful; 't is their fate
To have all feelings, save the one, decay,
And every passion into one dilate.
Lament of Tasso. LORD BYRON.
Alas! the breast that inly bleeds
Hath naught to dread from outward blow:
Who falls from all he knows of bliss
Cares little into what abyss.
The Giaour. LORD BYRON.
Full little knowest thou that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide:
To lose good dayes, that might be better spent;
To waste long nights in pensive discontent;
To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.
Mother Hubberd's Tale. E. SPENSER.
A thousand years a poor man watched
Before the gate of Paradise:
But while one little nap he snatched,
It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?
Oriental Poetry: Swift Opportunity. W.R. ALGER.
Defend me, therefore, common sense, say I,
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.
Task, Bk. III. W. COWPER.
Like Dead Sea fruit that tempts the eye,
But turns to ashes on the lips!
Lalla Rookh: The Fire Worshippers. T. MOORE.
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore,
All ashes to the taste.
Childe Harold, Canto III. LORD BYRON.
At threescore winters' end I died,
A cheerless being, sole and sad;
The nuptial knot I never tied,
And wish my father never had.
From the Greek. W. COWPER'S Trans.
The cold—the changed—perchance the dead—anew,
The mourned, the loved, the lost—too many!—yet how few!
Childe Harold, Canto IV. LORD BYRON.
Do not drop in for an after-loss.
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
Sonnet XC. SHAKESPEARE.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
Childe Harold, Canto III. LORD BYRON.