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Or crown with fancied wreaths my head.
Mine is a short inglorious race
To humble in the dust my face,
And mingle with the dead.

Oh Fame! thou goddess of my heart;
On him who gains thy praise,
Pointless must fall the Spectre's dart,
Consumed in Glory's blaze;
But me she beckons from the earth,
My name obscure, unmark'd my birth,
My life a short and vulgar dream:
Lost in the dull, ignoble crowd,
My hopes recline within a shroud,
My fate is Lethe's stream.

When I repose beneath the sod,
Unheeded in the clay,
Where once my playful footsteps trod,
Where now my head must lay;

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Your frowns, lovely girl, are the Fates which alone

Could bid me from fond admiration refrain;

By these, every hope, every wish were o'erthrown,

Till smiles should restore me to rapture again.

As the ivy and oak, in the forest entwined, The rage of the tempest united must weather,

My love and my life were by nature design'd

To flourish alike, or to perish together.

Then say not, sweet Anne, that the Fates have decreed

Your lover should bid you a lasting adieu; Till Fate can ordain that his bosom shall bleed,

His soul, his existence, are centred in you. 1807. [First published, 1832.]

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Yet there is one I pity more;

And much, alas! I think he needs it: For he, I'm sure, will suffer sore,

Who, to his own misfortune, reads it.

Thy rhymes, without the aid of magic, May once be read but never after: Yet their effect 's by no means tragic,

Although by far too dull for laughter.

But would you make our bosoms bleed,
And of no common pang complain
If you would make us weep indeed,
Tell us you'll read them o'er again.
March 8, 1807. [First published, 1832.]

ON FINDING A FAN
[Belonging to the same Anne Houson.]

IN one who felt as once he felt,

This might, perhaps, have fann'd the flame;

But now his heart no more will melt,

Because that heart is not the same.

As when the ebbing flames are low,

The aid which once improved their light And bade them burn with fiercer glow,

Now quenches all their blaze in night,

Thus has it been with passion's fires

As many a boy and girl remembers While every hope of love expires,

Extinguish'd with the dying embers.

The first, though not a spark survive, Some careful hand may teach to burn; The last, alas! can ne'er survive,

No touch can bid its warmth return.

Or, if it chance to wake again,

Not always doom'd its heat to smother, It sheds (so wayward fates ordain)

Its former warmth around another. 1807. [First published, 1832.]

FAREWELL TO THE MUSE

THOU Power! who hast ruled me through infancy's days,

Young offspring of Fancy, 't is time we should part;

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Can they speak of the friends that I lived but to love?

Ah, surely affection ennobles the strain! But how can my numbers in sympathy move, When I scarcely can hope to behold them again?

Can I sing of the deeds which my Fathers have done,

And raise my loud harp to the fame of my Sires?

For glories like theirs, oh, how faint is my tone!

For Heroes' exploits how unequal my fires! Untouch'd, then, my Lyre shall reply to the blast

'Tis hush'd, and my feeble endeavours

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