University of Virginia Library


197

Discontentment.

O if we never knew the genial hour
When Happiness sits by us like a god
Dispensing treasures, we would never know
The barren sadness of the common day,
The weariness, and discontentment sour
At human life—its ordinary load
Of hopes deferred, and presences that flow
Smilingly past us, syrens in the dream
Of young imagination, fancy-fed.
O I have seen such beauties with the gleam
Of fairy sunshine on them, and I long
Upon their bosoms this my life away
To dally, like the lover in a song,
And be a luting swain, Arcadian bred!