LOVE. Fickleness of.
Alas-how light a cause may move Dissention between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain has tried, And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something light as air-a look
A word unkind, or wrongly taken-
O! love, that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds or like the stream
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plains below,
Breaks into floods that part for ever.
O you that have the charge of love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound,
As in the fields of bliss above
He sits, with flowerets fettered round :-
Loose not a tie that round him clings,
Nor ever let him use his wings;
For even an hour, a minute's flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light,
Like that celestial bird, whose nest
Is found below far Eastern skies,—
Whose wings, though radiant when at rest,
Lose all their glory when he flies!
Some difference of this dangerous kind,—
By which, though light, the links that bind
The fondest hearts may soon be riven;
Some shadow in love's summer heaven,
Which, though a fleecy speck at first,
May yet in awful thunder burst.
But, love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain, But with the motion of all elements.
Courses as swift as thought in every power;
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye:
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd;
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste;
For valour, is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as sphinx, as sweet and musical,
As bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
I am undone; there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me :
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere,
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion,
Must die for love. "Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him ev'ry hour, to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table; heart, too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics.
LOVE. True, ever crossed.
For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth:
But, either it was different in blood,
Or else misgraff'd in respect of years;
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it;
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as a dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere the man hath power to say,- behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
LOVE. Wedded, Address to.
Hail, wedded love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In paradise, of all things common else!
By thee adult'rous lust was driv'n from men
Among the bestial herds to range; by thee
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother, first were known.-
Here love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels: not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendear'd,
Casual fruition; nor in court amours,
Mix'd dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball.
Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.
It is to be all made of sighs and tears;
It is to be all made of faith and service :
It is to be all made of fantasy,
All made of passion, and all made of wishes:
All adoration, duty, and observance,
All humbleness, all patience, and impatience,
All purity, all trial, all observance.
LOVERS. Parting, Interrupted.
I did not take my leave of him, but had
Most pretty things to say: ere I could tell him,
How I would think on him, at certain hours,
Such thoughts, and such: or I could make him swear
The shes of Italy should not betray
Mine interest, and his honour; or have charg'd him,
At the sixth hour of morn, at noon, at midnight,
To encounter me with orisons, for then
I am in heaven for him: or erc I could
Give him that parting kiss, which I had set
Betwixt two charming words, comes in my father,
And, like the tyrannous breathing of the north,
Shakes all our buds from growing.
LOWLINESS. Ambition's Ladder.
But 'tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face :
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend.
LUNAR SPHERE. What found in.
'There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases,
And beaux in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases.
There broken vows and death-bed alms are found,
And lovers' hearts with ends of ribands bound;
The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs,
The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs,
Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea,
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry.
LUXURY. Perverts the Tastc.
Luxury gives the mind a childish cast,
And, while she polishes, perverts the taste;
Habits of close attention, thinking heads,
Become more rare as dissipation spreads,
Till authors hear at length one general cry,-
Tickle and entertain us, or we die.
The loud demand, from year to year the same,
Beggars invention, and makes Fancy lame;
Till Farce itself, most mournfully jejune,
Calls for the kind assistance of a tune;
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