Haply, sternness, or misrule, crushed or warped the feelings.
Then, ill-combined in tempers, they learnt not each the other;
The growing child grew out of love, and drew the breath of fear;
The youth, ill-trained, renounced his fears, and made a league with cunning;
And so those hardened men were foes, that should have been chief friends.
Where was the cause, the mutual cause? O hunt it out to kill it:
And what the cure, the simple cure?—A mutual flash of love.
For dull estrangement's daily air froze up those early sympathies
By cold continuance in apathy, or cutting winds of censure;
It was a slow process, which any fleeting hour could have melted;