H

FROM these lone shades and ever-gloomy bowers,
Once the dear scenes of Henry's softer hours!
What tender strains of passion can impart

The pangs of absence to an amorous heart!
Far, far too faint the powers of language prove,
Language that slow interpreter of love!

Souls pair'd like ours, like ours to union wrought,
Converse by silent sympathy of thought;

O then, by that mysterious art, divine
The wild impatience of my breast by thine!
And, to conceive what I would say to thee,

Conceive, my Love, what thou wouldst say to me!

As in the tenderness of soul I sigh,

Methinks I hear thy tender soul reply ;

And as in thought, o'er heaps of heroes slain,
I trace thy progress on the fatal plain,
Perhaps thy thought explores me thro' the grove,
And, softening, steals an interval of love;
In the deep covert of a bowering shade
Describes my posture-languishingly laid!
Now, sadly solac'd with the murmuring springs,
Now, melting into tears, the softest things!
And how the feign'd ideas all agree!

So bowers the shade, so melt my tears for thee!
Here, as in Eden, once we blissful lay,

How oft night stole, unheeded, on the day!

Our soft-breath'd raptures charm'd the listening grove,

And all was harmony, for all was love!

But hark! the trumpet sounds! see discords rise !
'Tis honor calls; from me my Henry flies!
Honor to him, more bright than Rosamonda's eyes!
Not thus my honor with his passion strove,

His sighs I pitied, and indulg'd his love :
He then cried, "honor was an empty name,
"And love a sweeter recompense than fame."

Oh! had I liv'd in some obscure retreat, Securely fair, and innocently sweet;

How had I bless'd some humble shepherd's arms! How kept my fame as spotless as my charms!