Farewell to Love
Farewell, sweet Love! yet blame you not my truth;
More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child
Than I your form: your's were my hopes of youth,
And as you shaped my thoughts, I sigh'd or smil'd.
While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving
To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart
Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving,
To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart;
And when I met the maid that realized
Your fair creations, and had won her kindness,
Say but for her if aught on earth I prized!
Your dreams alone I dreamt and caught your blindness.
O grief! but farewell, Love! I will go play me
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad
Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky
How warm, how still! Tho' tears should dim mine eye,
Yet will my heart for days continue glad,
For here, my love, thou art, and here am I!
Each crime that once estranges from the virtues
Doth make the memory of their features daily
More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit
Can have the passport to our confidence
Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd,
Who prize and seek the honest man but as
A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.
Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven! whene'er
My unwash'd follies call for penance drear:
But when more hideous guilt this heart infects,
Instead of fiery coals upon my pate,
O let a titled patron be my fate;
That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests!
Right reverend dean, right honourable squire,
Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince, or if aught higher,
However proudly nicknamed, he shall be Anathema Maránatha to me!
A Sober Statement of Human Life, or the True Medium
A chance may win what by mischance was lost;
The net that holds not great, takes little fish:
In somethings all, in all things none are crost;
Few all they need, but none have all they wish:
Unmingled joys to no one here befall;
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!
Footnote 1
: This and the following poems and fragments, with the exception of those marked with 2, were communicated by Mr. Gutch.
Ed.