When Laura sings young hearts away,
I’m deafer than the deep;
When Leonora goes to play,
I sometimes go to sleep;
When Mary draws her white gloves out,
I never dance, I vow,—
“Too hot to kick one’s heel’s about!”
I’m not a lover now!
I’m busy, now, with state affairs;
I prate of Pitt and Fox;
I ask the price of rail-road shares,
I watch the turns of stocks.
And this is life! no verdure blooms
Upon the withered bough:
I save a fortune in perfumes;—
I’m not a lover now!
I may be yet, what others are,
A boudoir’s babbling fool,
The flattered star of Bench or Bar,
A party’s chief, or tool:—
Come shower or sunshine, hope or fear,
The palace or the plough,—
My heart and lute are broken here;—
I’m not a lover now!
Lady, the mist is on my sight,
The chill is on my brow;
My day is night, my bloom is blight
I’m not a lover now!
TIME’S SONG.
O’er the level plains, where mountains greet me as I go,
O’er the desert waste, where fountains at my bidding flow,
On the boundless beam by day, on the cloud by night,
I am riding hence away: who will chain my flight?
War his weary watch was keeping,—I have crushed his spear;
Grief within her bower was weeping,—I have dried her tear;
Pleasure caught a minute’s hold,—then I hurried by,
Leaving all her banquet cold, and her goblet dry.
Power had won a throne of glory: where is now his fame?
Genius said, “I live in story:” who hath heard his name?
Love beneath a myrtle bough whispered “Why so fast?”
And the roses on his brow withered as I past.
I have heard the heifer lowing o’er the wild wave’s bed;
I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle fed;
Where began my wandering? Memory will not say!
Where will rest my weary wings? Science turns away!
THE HOOPOE’S INVOCATION TO THE NIGHTINGALE.
(From the Birds of Aristophanes, 1. 209.)
Waken, dear one, from thy slumbers;
Pour again those holy numbers,
Which thou warblest there alone
In a heaven-instructed tone,
Mourning from this leafy shrine
Lost—lost Itys, mine and thine,
In the melancholy cry
Of a mother’s agony.
Echo, ere the murmurs fade,
Bear them from the yew tree’s shade
To the throne of Jove; and there,
Phœbus with his golden hair
Listens long, and loves to suit
To his ivory-mounted lute
Thy sad music; at the sound
All the gods come dancing round,
And a sympathetic song
Peals from the immortal throng.