LOVE AND MADNESS.

AN ELEGY.

H 2

"Cease, Mem'ry, cease (the friendless mourner cried)

To probe the bosom too severely tried!

Oh! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray

Through the bright fields of Fortune's better day,

* Warwick castle,

When youthful Hope, the music of the mind,

Tun'd all its charms, and E-n was kind!

"Yet, can I cease, while glows this trembling frame,

In sighs to speak thy melancholy name?

I hear thy spirit wail in every storm!

In midnight shades I view thy passing form!
Pale as in that sad hour, when doom'd to feel,
Deep in thy perjur'd heart, the bloody steel!

"Demons of Vengeance! ye at whose command

I grasp'd the sword with more than woman's hand,
Say ye, did Pity's trembling voice controul,
Or Horror damp the purpose of my soul!
No! my wild heart sat smiling o'er the plan,
Till Hate fulfill'd what baffled Love began!

"Yes; let the clay-cold breast, that never knew

One tender pang to generous Nature true,

Half-mingling pity with the gall of scorn,

Condemn this heart, that bled in love forlorn!

"And ye, proud fair, whose soul no gladness warms, Save Rapture's homage to your conscious charms! Delighted idols of a gaudy train!

Ill can your blunter feelings guess the pain,
When the fond faithful heart, inspir'd to prove
Friendship refin'd, the calm delight of love,

Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn,
And bleeds at perjur'd Pride's inhuman scorn!

"Say, then, did pitying Heav'n condemn the deed, When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed?