CXVI. The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled With thine Elysian water drops; the face Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, Reflects the meek eyed genius of the place, Whose green, wild margin now no more erase Art's works; nor must the delicate waters sleep, Prison'd in marble, bubbling from the base Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy, creep, CXVII. Fantastically tangled; the green hills Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes, Kiss'd by the breath of heaven, seems colour'd by its skies. CXVIII. Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, CXIX. And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, cloys? CXX. Alas! our young affections run to waste, CXXI. Oh Love! no habitant of earth thou art And to a thought such shape and image given, CXXII. Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized? In him alone. Can Nature shew so fair? Where are the charms and virtues which we dare Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, The unreach'd Paradise of our despair, Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, And overpowers the page where it would bloom again? CXXIII. Who loves, raves-'tis youth's frenzy-but the cure The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown - winds; The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun, Seems ever near the prize, — wealthiest when most undone. CXXIV. We wither from our youth, we gasp away Sick sick; unfound the boon-unslaked the thirst, Though to the last, in verge of our decay, Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first But all too late, so are we doubly curst. Love, fame, ambition, avarice 'tis the same, Each idle-and all ill- and none the worstFor all are meteors with a different name, And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. Few none CXXV. find what they love or could have loved, Though accident, blind contact, and the strong Whose touch turns Hope to dust, the dust we all have trod. |