Nor need I write-to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak:
Oh! what can idle words avail,
Unless the heart could speak?
By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent ache for thee.

WRITTEN AT ATHENS,

JANUARY, 16, 1810.

THE spell is broke, the charm is flown!
Thus is it with life's fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.
Each lucid interval of thought

Recalls the woes of nature's charter,

And he that acts as wise men ought,

But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.

N

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY."

ABSENT or present, still to thee,

My friend, what magic spells belong!
As all can tell, who share, like me,

In turn thy converse, and thy song.

But when the dreaded hour shall come

By friendship ever deem'd too nigh, And « MEMORY» o'er her Druid's tomb Shall weep that aught of thee can die, How fondly will she then repay

Thy homage offer'd at her shrine, And blend, while ages roll away, Her name immortally with thine!

April, 19, 1812.

ON A CORNELIAN HEART WHICH WAS BROKEN.

ILL-FATED heart! and can it be

That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain?
Have years of care for thine and thee
Alike been all employ'd in vain?
Yet precious seems each shatter'd part,
And every fragment dearer grown,
Since he who wears thee, feels thou art
A fitter emblem of his own.

WRITTEN BENEATH A PICTURE.

DEAR Object of defeated care!

Though now of love and thee bereft,

To reconcile me with despair

Thine image and my tears are left.

'Tis said with sorrow time can cope;
But this I feel can ne'er be true:
For by the death-blow of my hope
My memory immortal grew.

ON BEING ASKED WHAT WAS THE « ORIGIN OF LOVE?»

THE « origin of love! »>-Ah why
That cruel question ask of me,
When thou may'st read in many an eye
He starts to life on seeing thee?

And should'st thou seek his end to know:
My heart forebodes, my fears foresee,
He'll linger long in silent woe;
But live-until I cease to be.

TO A LADY WEEPING.

WEEP, daughter of a royal line,
A sire's disgrace, a realm's decay;
Ah, happy! if each tear of thine

Could wash a father's fault away!

Weep-for thy tears are virtue's tears-
Auspicious to these suffering isles;
And be each drop in future years
Repaid thee by thy people's smiles!

March, 1812.

WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.

As o'er the cold sepulchral stone
Some name arrests the passer-by;
Thus, when thou view'st this page

alone,

May mine attract thy pensive eye!

And when by thee that name is read,
Perchance in some succeeding year,
Reflect on me as on the dead,

And think my heart is buried here.

September 14th, 1809.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

In moments to delight devoted,

"

My life!» with tend'rest tone, you cry; Dear words! on which my heart had doted,

If youth could neither fade nor die.

To death even hours like these must roll,
Ah! then repeat those accents never;
Or change « my life!» into « my soul!»>

"

Which, like my love, exists for ever.

IMPROMPTU, IN REPLY TO A FRIEND.

WHEN from the heart where sorrow sits,
Her dusky shadow mounts too high,

And o'er the changing aspect flits,

And clouds the brow, or fills the eye;
Heed not that gloom, which soon shall sink :
My thoughts their dungeon know too well;
Back to my breast the wanderers shrink,
And droop within their silent cell.

SONNET TO GENEVRA.

THINE eyes' blue tenderness, thy long fair hair,
And the wan lustre of thy features—caught
From contemplation-where serenely wrought,
Seems sorrow's softness charm'd from its despair-
Have thrown such speaking sadness in thine air,

That-but I know thy blessed bosom fraught With mines of unalloy'd and stainless thought— I should have deem'd thee doom'd to earthly care. With such an aspect, by his colours blent,

When from his beauty-breathing pencil born, (Except that thou hast nothing to repent)

The Magdalen of Guido saw the morn—

Such seem'st thou-but how much more excellent? With nought remorse can claim-nor virtue scorn.