As by a stream's fair verdant side
In myrtle shades she roved along,
A serpent stung my blooming bride,
This brightest of the female throng—
The venom hastening thro' her veins
Forbade the freezing blood to flow.
And thus she left the Thracian plains
For these dejected groves below.
Even thou may'st pity my sad pain,
Since Love, as ancient stories say,
Forced thee to leave thy native reign,
And in Sicilian meadows stray:
Bright Proserpine thy bosom fired,
For her you sought unwelcome light,
Madness and love in you conspired
To seize her to the shades of night.
But if, averse to my request,
The banished nymph, for whom I mourn,
Must in Plutonian chambers rest,
And never to my arms return——
Take Orpheus too—his warm desire
Can ne'er be quench'd by your decree:
In life or death he must admire,
He must adore Eurydicè!
THE DESERTED FARM-HOUSE[36]
This antique dome the insatiate tooth of time
Now level with the dust has almost laid;—
Yet ere 'tis gone, I seize my humble theme
From these low ruins, that his years have made.
Behold the unsocial hearth!—where once the fires
Blazed high, and soothed the storm-stay'd traveller's woes;
See! the weak roof, that abler props requires,
Admits the winds, and swift descending snows.
Here, to forget the labours of the day,
No more the swains at evening hours repair,
But wandering flocks assume the well known way
To shun the rigours of the midnight air.
In yonder chamber, half to ruin gone,
Once stood the ancient housewife's curtained bed—
Timely the prudent matron has withdrawn,
And each domestic comfort with her fled.
The trees, the flowers that her own hands had reared,
The plants, the vines, that were so verdant seen,—
The trees, the flowers, the vines have disappear'd,
And every plant has vanish'd from the green.