| |
| | ————The imperial votaress pass’d on |
| In maiden meditation, fancy free. |
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| Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again? |
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WHEN the tree of love is budding first, | |
| Ere yet its leaves are green, | |
| Ere yet, by shower and sunbeam nurst | |
| Its infant life has been; | |
| The wild bee’s slightest touch might wring | 5 |
| The buds from off the tree, | |
| As the gentle dip of the swallow’s wing | |
| Breaks the bubbles on the sea. | |
| |
| But when its open leaves have found | |
| A home in the free air, | 10 |
| Pluck them, and there remains a wound | |
| That ever rankles there. | |
| The blight of hope and happiness | |
| Is felt when fond ones part, | |
| And the bitter tear that follows is | 15 |
| The life-blood of the heart. | |
| |
| When the flame of love is kindled first, | |
| ’T is the fire-fly’s light at even, | |
| ’T is dim as the wandering stars that burst | |
| In the blue of the summer heaven. | 20 |
| A breath can bid it burn no more, | |
| Or if, at times, its beams | |
| Come on the memory, they pass o’er | |
| Like shadows in our dreams. | |
| |
| But when that flame has blazed into | 25 |
| A being and a power, | |
| And smiled in scorn upon the dew | |
| That fell in its first warm hour, | |
| ’T is the flame that curls round the martyr’s head, | |
| Whose task is to destroy; | 30 |
| ’T is the lamp on the altars of the dead, | |
| Whose light is not of joy! | |
| |
| Then crush, even in their hour of birth, | |
| The infant buds of Love, | |
| And tread his growing fire to earth, | 35 |
| Ere ’t is dark in clouds above; | |
| Cherish no more a cypress tree | |
| To shade thy future years, | |
| Nor nurse a heart-flame that may be | |
| Quench’d only with thy tears. | 40 |
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