If you would have me love once more,
The blissful age of love restore;
From wine's free joys, and lovers' cares,
Relentless time, who no man spares,
Urges me quickly to retire,
And no more to such bliss aspire.
From such austerity exact,
Let's, if we can, some good extract;
Whose way of thinking with this age
Suits not, can ne'er be deemed a sage.
Let sprightly youth its follies gay,
Its follies amiable display;
Life to two moments is confined,
Let one to wisdom be consigned.
You sweet delusions of my mind,

THE voiceless symphony of moor and highland,
The rainbow on the mist,
The white moon-shield above the slumber-island,
The mirror-lake, star-kist,
The life of budding leaf and spray and branches,
The dew upon the sod,
The roar of downward-rushing avalanches
Are eloquent of God.

My eye sweeps far-extended plains of vision
And golden seas of light;



Upon my ear fall cadences elysian,
Like music in the night;
But all the glories to my sense appealing
Can no such raptures win

Like the stamen inside a flower
The steeple stands in lovely blue
And the day unfolds around its needle;

The flock of swallows that circles the steeple
Flies there each day through the same blue air
That carries their cries from me to you;

We know how high the sun is now
As long as the roof of the steeple glows,
The roof that's covered with sheets of tin;

Up there in the wind, where the wind is not
Turning the vane of the weathercock,
The weathercock silently crows in the wind.

O Son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
Between a gravestone and a cradle's head---
Between the love whose name is loss unending
And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,---
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.

Love, under Friendship's vesture white,
Laughs, his little limbs concealing;
And oft in sport, and oft in spite,
Like pity meets the dazzled sight,
Smiles thro' his tears revealing.
But now as Rage the God appears!
He frowns, and tempests shake his frame!
Frowning or smiling, or in tears,
'Tis Love; and Love is still the same.

I also loved, and the restless breaths
Of sleeplessness, fluttering through darkness,
Out of the park would downward drift
To the ravine, on to the archipelago
Of meadows, sinking from sight among
Wormwood, mint and quails beneath the wispy mist.
And the broad sweep of adoration's wing grew
Heavy and drunken, as though stung by shot,
Floundered into the air and, shuddering, fell short,
Scattering across the fields as dew.

And then the dawn was breaking. Till two
Rich jewels blinked in the incalculable sky,

FRIENDS, whom she look’d at blandly from her couch
And her white wrist above it, gem-bedew’d,
Were arguing with Pentheusa: she had heard
Report of Creon’s death, whom years before
She listen’d to, well-pleas’d; and sighs arose;
For sighs full often fondle with reproofs
And will be fondled by them. When I came
After the rest to visit her, she said,
“Myrtis! how kind! Who better knows than thou
The pangs of love? and my first love was he!”
Tell me (if ever, Eros! are reveal’d
Thy secrets to the earth) have they been true

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: ‘The night is fractured
and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest lines tonight.
I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.
I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Eph. What Friendship is, ARDELIA shew.
Ard. 'Tis to love, as I love You.
Eph. This Account, so short (tho' kind)
Suits not my enquiring Mind.
Therefore farther now repeat;
What is Friendship when complete?
Ard. 'Tis to share all Joy and Grief;
'Tis to lend all due Relief
From the Tongue, the Heart, the Hand;
'Tis to mortgage House and Land;
For a Friend be sold a Slave;
'Tis to die upon a Grave,
If a Friend therein do lie.
Eph. This indeed, tho' carry'd high,
This, tho' more than e'er was done

A DIALOGUE: Addressed to a young Lady.

Friendship:

In vain thy lawless Fires contend with mine,
Tho' Crouds unnumber'd fall before thy Shrine;
Let Youths, who ne'er aspir'd to noble Fame,
And the soft Virgin, kindle at thy Flame,
Thee, Son of Indolence and Vice, I scorn,
By Reason nourish'd, and of Virtue born.

Love:

Vain is that boasted Reason 'gainst my Dart,
I pierce the Sage's, as the vulgar Heart,
All Ages, Sexes, the soft Torment share,
The hoary Patriot, and the blooming Fair.