HAPPY my heart, and happier far was I,
When ignorant of love’s entanglement;
When I knew not its art or blandishment,
And fearless passed young Cupid lightly by.
Oh, happy hour! How vainly do I try
To now regain my freedom, and repent
The days, the hours, the years that have been
In giving birth to an unanswered cry!
No. Not in the review of my life’s sin
Have I found punishment, or court, or trial,
Or sentence of mankind, or prison wherein
I might drink drops of poison from a phial,
Or retribution that could half begin
To be so bitter as love’s cold denial.
XCV
STRIVE as I would to banish from my mind
The witchery that thy fair presence giveth,
I cannot kill the flower of love that liveth,
By that same witchery, or leave behind
The subtle fragrance that doth still remind
My soul of one whose song forever singeth,
Like some inhabitant of air that wingeth
Above those treasures that on earth we find.
For it is oft—as I indeed am now—
With those who trample love beneath the heart.
The more they seek to kill, or lay it low,
The more it liveth with new-fashioned art,
That causeth it, unwelcomed, still to grow,
And thus deny that from it they shall part.
XCVI
SINCE on thy form hath beauty laid its hand,
And set its snare for thee and me likewise,
Yet taught thee the Soul’s beauty to despise;
And given thee no power to understand
The reason or the influence that planned
The depth of life, yet still to temporize;
How is such wanton thought to harmonize
With love’s fierce fire by my strong passion fanned?
O! Waste not then thy beauty in its youth;
But turn it to account, lest thine own end
Shall find thee, left without an hair or tooth,
All stripped of nature’s charm, which now may lend
Its power, for thee to reproduce the truth
Of that same beauty thou wouldst lightly spend.
XCVII
IN those brief moments when thou wert my own,
I drank a poison deadlier to my heart
Than that which toucheth every vital part,
And causeth man to tremble and to moan
Until the seeds of death be fairly sown,
And he in palsied attitude doth start
To rise, before his spirit shall depart,
And utter on this earth its final groan.
That poison was love’s undisguised belief
That I had found eternal happiness,
True freedom from all ill, and true relief
From weary waiting and from loneliness.
Ah! Cruel fate! Thou gavest but new grief,
When I believed that Heaven my life would bless!
XCVIII
LET not thy beauty serve thee in the guise
Of some dark power, as it hath in the past.
Make for thyself some beauty that may last,
And for thy friends some gratitude likewise.
Best that they should applaud thee to the skies,
Than in old age thou shouldst aside be cast,
And when thou diest be but death’s repast:
Nought but cold clay (from which the soul should rise).
Forget not that thy flesh must soon expire,
And thy youth’s veil from off thy face be torn.
Then must thou from deception soon retire,
When outward beauty is by time outworn.
Oh! I would see thy soul by love reborn:
Thou for thyself; I for my heart’s desire.