Yet temper'd with such chaste and awful fear
As wretches feel who wait their doom;
Nor must one ruder thought presume,
Tho' but in whispers breathed, to meet her ear.

It is to hope, tho' hope were lost,

Tho' heaven and earth thy passion crost;
Tho' she were bright as sainted queens above,
And thou the least and meanest swain
That folds his flock upon the plain,

Yet if thou dar'st not hope, thou dost not love.

It is to quench thy joy in tears,

To nurse strange doubts and groundless fears; If pangs of jealousy thou hast not proved, Tho' she were fonder and more true Than any nymph old poets drew, Oh never dream again that thou hast loved.

If when the darling maid is gone,
Thou dost not seek to be alone,

Wrapt in a pleasing trance of tender woe;
And muse, and fold thy languid arms,
Feeding thy fancy on her charms,

Thou dost not love, for love is nourish'd so.

If any hopes thy bosom share

But those which love has planted there,
Or any cares but his thy breast enthrall,

Thou never yet his power hast known ;
Love sits on a despotic throne,
And reigns a tyrant, if he reign at all.

Now if thou art so lost a thing,

Here all thy tender sorrows bring,

And prove whose patience longest can endure;
We'll strive whose fancy shall be lost

In dreams of fondest passion most,

For if thou thus hast loved, oh! never hope a cure.

MRS. BARBAuld.

You tell me that you truly love;

Ah! know you well what love does mean? Does neither whim nor fancy move

The rapture of your transient dream?

Tell me, when absent, do you think
O'er every look, o'er every sigh?

Do you in melancholy sink,

And doubt and fear you know not why?

Do

Do you, when near her, die to say
How much you love, yet cannot tell?
Does a look melt your soul away,

A touch your nerves with transport swell?

Could you for her, fame, wealth, despise?
In poverty and toil feel blest,
Drink sweet delusion from her eyes,

Or smile at ruin on her breast?

The charms of every other fair

With coldness could you learn to view?

Fondly unchang'd to her repair,

With transports ever young and new?

And tell me, at her loss or hate,

Would death your only refuge prove?

Ah! if in aught you hesitate,
Coward! you dare not say you love.

HARD
ARD is the fate of him who loves,
Yet dares not tell his amorous pain
But to the sympathetic groves,

But to the lonely listening plain.

Oh!

Oh! when she blesses next your shade,

Oh! when her footsteps next are seen In flowery tracks along the mead,

In fresher mazes o'er the green,

Ye gentle spirits of the vale,

To whom the tears of love are dear, From dying lilies waft a gale,

And sigh my sorrows in her car.

O, tell her what she cannot blame,
Tho' fear my tongue must ever bind ;
O, tell her that my virtuous flame
Is as her spotless soul refined.

Not her own guardian angel eyes
With chaster tenderness his care;

Not purer her own wishes rise,

Not holier her own sighs in prayer.

But if at first her virgin fear

Should start at love's suspected name, With that of friendship soothe her ear :

True love and friendship are the same.

THOMSON.

THE tears I shed must ever fall!
I mourn not for an absent swain,
For thought may past delights recall,
And parted lovers meet again.

I weep not for the silent dead,

Their toils are past, their sorrows o'er; And those they loved their steps shall tread, And death shall join to part no more.

Tho' boundless oceans roll'd between,
If certain that his heart is near,
A conscious transport glads each scene,
Soft is the sigh, and sweet the tear.
E'en when by death's cold hand removed
We mourn the tenant of the tomb,
To think that e'en in death he loved
Can gild the horrors of the gloom.

But bitter, bitter are the tears

Of her who slighted love bewails; No hope her dreary prospect cheers, No pleasing melancholy hails.