136

CONSENT-REFUSAL.

34. This kills his pleasure all the day,
This thought destroys his nightly rest;
Go where he will, 't is in his way,

To him a loathsome, hated pest.

J. T. WATSON.

1.

CONSENT

REFUSAL.

I cannot love him:

Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth,
In voices well divulg'd, learned, and valiant,
And, in dimensions and the shape of nature,
A gracious person: but yet I cannot love him.

Do I not in plainest truth

SHAKSPEARE.

2.

Tell you-I do not, nor I cannot love you?

SHAKSPEARE.

3. He might have took his answer long ago.

SHAKSPEARE.

4. Repulse upon repulse met ever

Yet gives not o'er, tho' desperate of success.

MILTON.

5. If you oblige me suddenly to choose,

My choice is made and I must you refuse.

DRYDEN.

6. Take my esteem, if you on that can live; But, frankly, sir, 't is all I have to give.

DRYDEN.

Nay, what seems stranger, is not in our choice;
We only love where fate ordains we should,

And, blindly fond, oft slight superior merit.

8. "T was whisper'd balm-'t was sunshine spoken!

MOORE.

9. I strove not to resist so sweet a flame,

But gloried in a happy captive's name;

Nor would I now, would love permit, be free!

10. My heart with love is beating,

Transported by your eyes;

Alas! there's no retreating,

In vain a captive flies.

LORD LYTTLETON.

11. I've rich ones rejected, and fond ones denied, But, take me, fond shepherd,-I'm thine.

12. Oh, do not talk to me of love,

"Tis deepest cruelty to me

MCNEIL.

Why throw a net around the bird

That might be happy, light and free?

WESTMACOTT

13. Now what could artless Jennie do?
She had na' will to say him na';
At length she blush'd a sweet consent,
And love was ay between them twa.

But constant, he were perfect; that one error

Fills him with faults; makes him run through all sins.

2. I am constant as the northern star,

Of whose true, fix'd, and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

SHAKSPEARE.

SHAKSPEARE

138

CONSTANCY - INCONSTANCY.

3. Go, bid the needle its dear North forsake,
To which with trembling reverence it doth bend ;
Go, bid the stones a journey upwards make;

Go, bid th' ambitious flames no more ascend;
And when these false to their old motions prove,
Then will I cease thee, thee alone to love.

4. Perhaps this cruel nymph well knows to feign
Forbidding speech, coy looks, and cold disdain,
To raise his passion: Such are female arts,
To hold in safer snares inconstant hearts.

COWLEY.

GAY'S Dione

5. True constancy no time, no power can move,
He that hath known to change, ne'er knew to love.

6. Yes, let the eagle change his plume,

The leaf its hue, the flower its bloom,
But ties around that heart were spun,
Which would not, could not be undone.

7. Sooner shall the blue ocean melt to air, Sooner shall earth resolve itself to sea, Than I resign thine image, Oh my fair!

Or think of any thing, excepting thee.

GAY'S Dione

CAMPBELL.

BYRON'S Don Juan.

8. Love bears within itself the very germ

Of change; and how should this be otherwise?
That violent things more quickly find a term
Is shown through nature's whole analogies.

9. Then fare thee well-I'd rather make

My bower upon some icy lake,
When thawing suns begin to shine,
Than trust to love so false as thine!

BYRON'S Don Juan.

MOORE

10. Oh, the heart, that has truly lov'd, never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close,

As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
The same look which she turn'd when he rose.

11. Sweetest love! I'll not forget thee!

Time shall only teach my heart

Fonder, warmer to regret thee,

Lovely, gentle as thou art!

MOORE

MOORE.

12. There are three things a wise man will not trust:
The wind, the sunshine of an April day,
And woman's plighted faith.

SOUTHEY.

13. Tell her I'll love her while the clouds drop rain,

Or while there's water in the pathless main.

14. Think not, beloved, time can break
The spell around us cast,

Or absence from my bosom take
The memory of the past.

15. The love that is kept in the beauty of trust,
Cannot pass like the foam from the seas,

16.

17.

Or a mark that the finger hath trac'd in the dust,
Where 't is swept by the breath of the breeze.
MRS. AMELIA B. WELBY.

The mountain rill

Seeks, with no surer flow, the far, bright sea,
Than my unchang'd affection flows to thee.

Love, constant love!

PARK BENJAMIN

Age cannot quench it-like the primal ray
From the vast fountain that supplies the day,
Far, far above

Our cloud-encircled region, it will flow

As

pure and as eternal in its glow.

PARK BENJAMIN

140

CONSTANCY - INCONSTANCY.

18. I lov'd thee in thy spring-time's blushing hour,-
I lov'd thee in thy summer's ripen'd noon-
I lov'd thee in the blossom, bud, and flower—
The tear of April, and the smile of June :-
Fear not, then, fear not any hour will see
The heart grow cold that ever beats for thee!

19 With a kiss my vow was greeted
As I knelt before thy shrine;
But I saw that kiss repeated
On another lip than mine:
And a solemn vow was spoken

That thy heart should not be chang d;
But that binding vow was broken,
And thy spirit was estrang'd.

20. Though youth be past, and beauty fled,
The constant heart its pledge redeems,
Like box that guards the flowerless bed,
And brighter from the contrast seems.

21. Thou art fickle as the sea,

Thou art wandering as the wind,
And the restless, ever-mounting flames
Are not more hard to bind.

22. Inconstant! are the waters so

That fall in showers on hill and plain,
Then, tired of what they find below,
Ride on the sunbeams back again?

23. There is nothing but death

Our affection can sever,
And till life's latest breath

Love shall bind us for ever.

J. O. ROCKWELL.

MRS. S. J. HALE.

W. C. BRYANT.

J. G. PERCIVAL.