The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd Must fall the earliest prey; Though by no hand untimely snatch'd, And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that follow'd such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd, As stars that shoot along the sky Shine brightest as they fall from high. As once I wept, if I could weep, And show that love, however vain, Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears February, 1812 STANZAS. ["IF SOMETIMES," &c.] If sometimes in the haunts of men The semblance of thy gentle shade: Oh, pardon that in crowds awhile I waste one thought I owe to thee, I would not fools should overhear If not the goblet pass unquaff'd, From all her troubled visions free, For wert thou vanish'd from my mind, No, no -it is my sorrow's pride That last dear duty to fulfil; Though all the world forget beside, 'Tis meet that I remember still. For well I know, that such had been A blessing never meant for me; March 14. 1812. ON A CORNELIAN HEART WHICH WAS BROKEN.(1) ILL-FATED Heart! and can it be That thou shouldst thus be rent in twain ? Yet precious seems each shatter'd part, March 16. 1812. LINES TO A LADY WEEPING. (2) WEEP, daughter of a royal line, A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay; Could wash a father's fault away! (1) [We know not whether the reader should understand the cornelian heart of these lines to be the same with that of which some notices are given in Vol. VII. p. 99.-E.] (2) [This impromptu owed its birth to an on dit, that the late Princess Charlotte of Wales burst into tears on hearing that the Whigs had found it impossible to put together a cabinet, at the period of Mr. Perceval's death. They were appended to the first edition of the " Corsair," and excited a sensation, as it is called, marvellously disproportionate to their length,-or, we may add, their merit. The ministerial prints raved for two months on end, in the most foul-mouthed vituperation of the poet, and all that belonged to him- the Morning Post even announced a motion in the House of Lords-" and all this," Lord Byron writes to Mr. Moore, "as Bedreddin in the Arabian Nights remarks, for making a cream tart with pepper: how odd, that eight lines should have given birth, I really think, to eight thousand!"-E.] Weep-for thy tears are Virtue's tears— March, 1812. THE CHAIN I GAVE. (From the Turkish.) THE chain I gave was fair to view, These gifts were charm'd by secret spell That chain was firm in every link, But not to bear a stranger's touch; That lute was sweet-till thou could'st think In other hands its notes were such. Let him, who from thy neck unbound Restring the chords, renew the clasp. |