Dreams and delusions, baseless, hollow,
And vanities still false, though new.
Then fly I earthly joys, I find them
Leave terror-working stings behind them:
“Beware, beware!” experience cries;
Yet ah! how faint the voice of duty,
One smile of yonder flattering beauty
Would make me waste even centuries.
—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part II.