Joys as winged dreams fly fast ;
Why should sadness longer last?
Grief is but a wound to woe;
Gentlest fair one, mourn no mo.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

CCLXXXI.

LOVE CONSOLED.

LOVE AND DEATH.

IF thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart-

Then sleep, dear, sleep!

And not a sorrow

Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
Lie still and deep,

Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o' the sun to-morrow

In Eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart

Of love, and all its smart-
Then die, dear, die!

'T is deeper, sweeter,

Than on the rose-bank to lie dreaming
With folded eye;

And then alone, amid the beaming
Of love's stars, thou'lt meet her

In Eastern sky.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes.

CCLXXXII.

LOVE DYING OF UNKINDNESS.

SLAIN BY A MAID.

COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;

I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

P

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!

My part of death no one so true
Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet

On my black coffin let there be strown;

Not a friend, not a friend greet

My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown: A thousand thousand sighs to save,

AWAY, delights; go seek some other dwelling,
For I must die:

Farewell, false love; thy tongue is ever telling
Lie after lie.

For ever let me rest now from your smarts;
Alas, for pity go,

And fire their hearts

That have been hard to thee; mine was not so.

Never again deluding Love shall know me,
For I will die;

And all those griefs that think to over-grow me,
Shall be as I;

For ever will I sleep, while poor maids cry,

"Alas, for pity stay,

And let us die

With thee; men cannot mock us in the clay."

Beaumont and Fletcher.

CCLXXXIV.

LOVE DYING OF UNKINDNESS.

SAY, I DIED TRUE.

LAY a garland on my hearse
Of the dismal yew;

Maidens, willow branches bear;

Say, I died true.

My love was false, but I was firm

From my hour of birth.
Upon my buried body lie
Lightly, gentle earth!

Beaumont and Fletcher.

CCLXXXV.

LOVE DYING OF UNKINDNESS.

A DYING LOVER.

Go, tell Amynta, gentle swain,

I would not die, nor dare complain;
Thy tuneful voice with numbers join;
Thy words will more prevail than mine.
To souls oppressed and dumb with grief,
The gods ordained this kind relief;
That music should in sounds convey,
What dying lovers dare not say.

A sigh or tear perhaps she'll give,

But love on pity cannot live.

Tell her that hearts for hearts were made,

And love with love is only paid.

Tell her my pains so fast increase,
That soon they will be past redress;
But ah! the wretch that sleepless lies
Attends but death to close his eyes.

John Dryden.

CCLXXXVI.

LOVE DYING OF UNKINdness.

THE MAID OF NEIDPATH.

EARL MARCH looked on his dying child,
And smit with grief to view her—
"The youth," he cried, "whom I exiled
Shall be restored to woo her.

"She's at the window many an hour
His coming to discover :"

And he looked up to Ellen's bower
And she looked on her lover--

But ah! so pale, he knew her not,
Though her smile on him was dwelling-
"And am I then forgot-forgot?"

It broke the heart of Ellen.

In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs,

Her cheek is cold as ashes;

Nor love's own kiss shall wake those eyes

To lift their silken lashes.

Thomas Campbell.

CCLXXXVII.

LOVE DYING OF UNKINDNESS.

THE MAID OF NEIDPATH.

O LOVERS' eyes are sharp to see,
And lovers' ears in hearing;

And love, in life's extremity

Can lend an hour of cheering.

Disease had been in Mary's bower
And slow decay from mourning,

Though now she sits on Neidpath's tower
To watch her Love's returning.

All sunk and dim her eyes so bright,
Her form decayed by pining,

Till through her wasted hand, at night,
You saw the taper shining.

By fits a sultry hectic hue

Across her cheek was flying;

By fits so ashy pale she grew
Her maidens thought her dying.

Yet keenest powers to see and hear
Seemed in her frame residing;
Before the watch-dog pricked his ear,
She heard her lover's riding;

Ere scarce a distant form was kenned
She knew and waved to greet him,
And o'er the battlement did bend
As on the wing to meet him.

He came he passed-an heedless gaze
As o'er some stranger glancing;
Her welcome, spoke in faltering phrase,
Lost in his courser's prancing—
The castle-arch, whose hollow tone
Returns each whisper spoken,

Could scarcely catch the feeble moan
Which told her heart was broken.

Sir Walter Scott.

CCLXXXVIII.

LOVE DYING OF UNKINDNESS.

BEFORE DEATH.

SWEET mother, in a minute's span
Death parts thee and my love of thee;
Sweet love, that yet art living man,

Come back, true love, to comfort me.
Back, ah, come back! ah well away!
But my Love comes not any day.