Neglected fortune flies; and, sliding swift, Prone into ruin fall his scorn'd affairs 'Tis naught but gloom around. The darken'd sun Loses his light. The rosy-bosom'd Spring To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch, Contracted, bends into a dusky vault. All nature fades extinct; and she alone Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought, Fills every sense, and pants in every vein. Books are but formal dullness, tedious friends; And sad amid the social band he sits, Lonely and unattentive. From the tongue The unfinish'd period falls: while, borne away On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies To the vain bosom of his distant fair; And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixed In melancholy site, with head declined, And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts, Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms, Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream, Romantic, hangs; there through the pensive dusk Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost, Indulging all to love; or on the bank Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears. Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day; Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east, Enlighten'd by degrees, and in her train Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks, Beneath the trembling languish of her beam, With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve To mingle woes with his; or, while the world And all the sons of care lie hush'd in sleep, Associates with the midnight shadows drear; And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours His idly tortur'd heart into the page Meant for the moving messenger of love-- Where rapture burns on rapture, every line With rising frenzy fir'd. But if on bed Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies. All night he tosses, nor the balmy power In any posture finds; till the gray morn Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch, Exanimate by love: and then perhaps Exhausted nature sinks awhile to rest, Still interrupted by distracted dreams, That o'er the sick imagination rise And in black colors paint the mimic scene. Oft with the enchantress of his soul he talks; Sometimes in crowds distress'd, or if retir'd To secret-winding flower-enwoven bowers, Far from the dull impertinence of man, Just as he, credulous, his endless cares Begins to lose in blind oblivious love, Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how, Through forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths With desolation brown, he wanders waste, In night and tempest wrapp'd; or shrinks, aghast, Back from the bending precipice; or wades The turbid stream below, and strives to reach The farther shore, where succorless and sad