| |
| BY all I lov’d, neglected and forgot, | |
| No friendly face e’er lights my squalid cot; | |
| Shunn’d, hated, wrong’d, unpitied, unredrest, | |
| The mock’d quotation of the scorner’s jest! | |
| Ev’n the poor súpport of my wretched life, | 5 |
| Snatched by the violence of legal strife. | |
| Oft grateful for my very daily bread | |
| To those my family’s once large bounty fed; | |
| A welcome inmate at their homely fare, | |
| My griefs, my woes, my sighs, my tears they share: | 10 |
| (Their vulgar souls unlike the souls refin’d, | |
| The fashioned marble of the polished mind). | |
| |
| In vain would Prudence, with decorous sneer, | |
| Point out a censuring world, and bid me fear; | |
| Above the world, on wings of Love, I rise— | 15 |
| I know its worst, and can that worst despise; | |
| Let Prudence’ direst bodements on me fall, | |
| M[ontgomer]y, rich reward, o’erpays them all! | |
| |
| Mild zephyrs waft thee to life’s farthest shore, | |
| Nor think of me and my distress more,— | 20 |
| Falsehood accurst! No! still I beg a place, | |
| Still near thy heart some little, little trace: | |
| For that dear trace the world I would resign: | |
| O let me live, and die, and think it mine! | |
| |
| “I burn, I burn, as when thro’ ripen’d corn | 25 |
| By driving winds the crackling flames are borne;” | |
| Now raving-wild, I curse that fatal night, | |
| Then bless the hour that charm’d my guilty sight: | |
| In vain the laws their feeble force oppose, | |
| Chain’d at Love’s feet, they groan, his vanquish’d foes. | 30 |
| In vain Religion meets my shrinking eye, | |
| I dare not combat, but I turn and fly: | |
| Conscience in vain upbraids th’ unhallow’d fire, | |
| Love grasps her scorpions—stifled they expire! | |
| Reason drops headlong from his sacred throne, | 35 |
| Your dear idea reigns, and reigns alone; | |
| Each thought intoxicated homage yields, | |
| And riots wanton in forbidden fields. | |
| By all on high adoring mortals know! | |
| By all the conscious villain fears below! | 40 |
| By your dear self!—the last great oath I swear, | |
| Not life, nor soul, were ever half so dear! | |
| |
