There is a sort of torture which attends
That most delightful of the heart's delights,
A sort of cruelty which somehow blends
With passion in its most distracted flights;
And absence from a bosom that requites
An all-absorbing love is as a flame
Fed ten-fold, yet insatiate; it excites
Those maddened cravings which the breast inflame,
Those fiery, longing gasps within the fevered frame.
CV.
However, I'm too fond of pondering
When it's so necessary to proceed,
And on to worthless topics wandering
To which my friends will pay but little heed,
All those I mean who take my book and read
Those matters that they studied long ago,
Who of such information have no need
And want to hear of something they don't know;
I know what's due to them and they shall have it so.
CVI.
'Twas Dora, as by now you will have guessed,
Who was the burden of poor Rowland's thought,
He was not merely by her face impressed
But loved her to distraction as he ought,
It is you know the popular report
That the best love is love at the first sight;
If such is true or not it matters nought,
I'd rather not discuss the point to-night,
It won't affect our story whether wrong or right.
CVII.
I think and I've good reason to suppose
This was a first-sight love, but who can say
For certain if it was so? Goodness knows
If he conceived it in amongst the hay:
If I hear rightly ever since that day
He had been somewhat quieter than before
And had been known to take himself away
To wander long alone upon the shore:
Such oddities betoken love you may be sure.
CVIII.
Ah, who may tell what crowding thoughts arose
Where boiled the tumult of Love's surging sea,
That strength this world itself could not enclose,
Nor Space with infinite immensity!
But there no matter why, love is to be
While men and women both are what they are,
While eyes can wander unrestrainedly,
And light on dimpled cheeks unknown to Ma,
Or eyes that glisten like a polished scimitar.
CIX.