XIV. ON FAME. "You cannot eat your cake and have it too." How fever'd is the man, who cannot look It is as if the rose should pluck herself, Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom. But the rose leaves herself upon the brier, grace, Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed? XV. WHY did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell; Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease, Yet would I on this very midnight cease, And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds; Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, But Death intenser· Death is Life's high meed. 1819. XVI. ON A DREAM. As Hermes once took to his feathers light, So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day, But to that second circle of sad Hell, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell Their sorrows:- pale were the sweet lips I saw, Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form XVII. IF by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd, Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness, Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress Than Midas of his coinage, let us be Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown: So, if we may not let the Muse be free, She will be bound with garlands of her own. XVIII. THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang❜rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave |