Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Samuel Kettell, ed. Specimens of American Poetry. 1829.

By Love

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867)

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

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,

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

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.

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

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;

’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,

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.