The slightest grief, the gentlest pain,
Was never yet by tears removed;
How doubly idle, then, how vain,
To deem that they whose hearts have loved,
And misery's desolation proved,
Can drown in tears the woes they feel-
Woes nought but time can ever heal.
Love is a fiery spirit-lave
With water, it more fiercely burns;
It had its birth-place in the wave,
And tears to food and fuel turns;
Then lend thy ear to him who mourns,
That time, and time alone, can heal
The tear-resisting woes you feel.
Pastor de Filida, p. 217.
"No me alegran los placeres."
IN pleasure there's no charm to me—
No thoughts of gloom with sadness dwell,
For both are mutable.
When pleasure comes with sparkling eye,
I watch it like a dream that's gone;
I know the sunshine in the sky
Proves that the dusk is hastening on ;
The brightest blaze that gilds the dell
The soonest is dispersed and done-
For joy is mutable.
And sorrow has most charms for me,
When mantled in its gloomiest weeds,
Because I know to misery
I soon must cede-or misery cedes;
Then I grow bold, and struggle well
To bear the wound howe'er it bleeds,
For pain is mutable.
"Como la tierna madre que el doliente."
As the fond mother when her suffering child
Asks some sweet object of desire with tears,
Grants it, although her fond affection fears
'Twill double all its sufferings; reconcil'd
To more appalling evils, by the mild
Influence of present pity,-shuts her ears
To prudence-for an hour's repose-prepares
Long sorrow-grievous pain.-I, lost and wild,
Thus feed my foolish and infected thought
That asks for dangerous aliment. In vain
I would withhold it.-Clamorous again
It comes-and weeps-and I'm subdued-and nought
Can o'er that childish will a victory gain:
So have despair and gloom their triumphs wrought!
THE SONG OF CATHARINE OF ARRAGON.
O TAKE a lesson, flowers! from me,
How in a dawn all charms decay-
Less than my shadow doom'd to be,
Who was a wonder yesterday.
I, with the early twilight born,
Found, ere the evening shades, a bier;
And I should die in darkness lorn,
But that the moon is shining here.
So must ye die-though ye appear
So fair-and night your curtain be;
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
My fleeting being was consol'd
When the carnation met my view:
One hurrying day my doom has told—
Heaven gave that lovely flower but two.
Ephemeral monarch of the wold-
I clad in gloom-in scarlet he;
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
The jasmin, sweetest flower of flowers,
The soonest is its radiance fled;
It scarce perfumes as many hours
As there are star-beams round its head.
If living amber fragrance shed,
The jasmine, sure, its shrine must be:
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
The bloody-warrior fragrance gives-
It towers unblushing, proud, and gay:
More days than other flowers it lives-
It blooms through all the days of May.
I'd rather like a shade decay,
Than such a gaudy being be:
O take a lesson, flowers! from me.
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