A something light as air,—a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken,— O, love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken! And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds,—or like the stream,
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part forever.
O you, that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound, As in the Fields of Bliss above
He sits, with flowerets fettered round;— Loose not a tie that round him clings,
Nor ever let him use his wings;
For even an hour, a minute's flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light.
Like that celestial bird,—whose nest
Is found beneath far Eastern skies,— Whose wings, though radiant when at rest,
Lose all their glory when he flies!
THOMAS MOORE.
BLIGHTED LOVE.
Flowers are fresh, and bushes green,
Cheerily the linnets sing; Winds are soft, and skies serene;
Time, however, soon shall throw Winter's snow O'er the buxom breast of Spring!
Hope, that buds in lover's heart,
Lives not through the scorn of years; Time makes love itself depart;
Time and scorn congeal the mind,— Looks unkind Freeze affection's warmest tears.
Time shall make the bushes green;
Time dissolve the winter snow; Winds be soft, and skies serene;
Linnets sing their wonted strain: But again Blighted love shall never blow!
From the Portuguese of LUIS DE CAMOENS.
Translation of LORD STRANGFORD.