 | Plays and poems |  |
429
[I know art hardens what my love would speak]
I know art hardens what my love would speak,And bounds my feelings with a rigid line
Of measured rhymes, whose narrow laws confine
My forward passions, making cold and weak
The warm rich currents that forever seek
An outlet from my heart. The loss is thine—
To taste but water where you hoped for wine;
But mine the shameful burning of the cheek—
Mine the cruel sorrow o'er a fruitless deed,
Who boasted nobly how sublime a thing
Should bloom from love, and decorate the Spring
With beauties suited aptly to the seed
From whence it grew;—but grew a sightless weed,
Shaming the hand that makes the offering.
| Plays and poems | |