LINES TO A LOVER
When you told us our glances soft, timid and mild,
Could occasion such wounds in the heart,
Can ye wonder that yours, so ungovern'd and wild,
Some wounds to our cheeks should impart?
The wounds on our cheeks are but transient, I own,
With a blush they appear and decay;
But those on the heart, fickle youths, ye have shown
To be even more transient than they.
Waladata.
VERSES TO MY DAUGHTERS[33]
With jocund heart and cheerful brow
I used to hail the festal morn—
How must Mohammed greet it now?—
A prisoner helpless and forlorn.
While these dear maids in beauty's bloom,
With want opprest, with rags o'erspread,
By sordid labors at the loom
Must earn a poor, precarious bread.
Those feet that never touched the ground,
Till musk or camphor strew'd the way,
Now bare and swoll'n with many a wound.
Must struggle thro' the miry clay.
Those radiant cheeks are veil'd in woe,
A shower descends from every eye,
And not a starting tear can flow,
That wakes not an attending sigh.
Fortune, that whilom own'd my sway,
And bow'd obsequious to my nod,
Now sees me destin'd to obey,
And bend beneath oppression's rod.