Alas!—how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm, when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven was all tranquillity! A something, light as air—a look, A word unkind or wrongly taken— Oh! love, that tempests never shook, A breath, a touch like this hath shaken. And ruder words will soon rush in To spread the breach that words begin; And eyes forget the gentle ray They wore in courtship’s smiling day; And voices lose the tone that shed A tenderness round all they said; Till fast declining, one by one, The sweetnesses of love are gone, And hearts, so lately mingled, seem Like broken clouds,—or like the stream, That smiling left the mountain’s brow As though its waters ne’er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below, Breaks into floods, that part for ever. Oh, you, that have the charge of Love, Keep him in rosy bondage bound, As in the Fields of Bliss above He sits, with flow’rets fetter’d round;[327]— Loose not a tie that round him clings, Nor ever let him use his wings; For e’en an hour, a minute’s flight Will rob the plumes of half their light. Like that celestial bird,—whose nest Is found beneath far Eastern skies,— Whose wings, though radiant when at rest, Lose all their glory when he flies![328] Some difference, of this dangerous kind,— By which, though light, the links that bind The fondest hearts may soon be riven; Some shadow in Love’s summer heaven, Which, though a fleecy speck at first, May yet in awful thunder burst;— Such cloud it is that now hangs over The heart of the Imperial Lover, And far hath banish’d from his sight His NOURMAHAL, his Haram’s Light! Hence is it, on this happy night, When Pleasure through the fields and groves Has let loose all her world of loves, And every heart has found its own, He wanders, joyless and alone, And weary as that bird of Thrace, Whose pinion knows no resting place.[329] In vain the loveliest cheeks and eyes This Eden of the Earth supplies Come crowding round—the cheeks are pale, The eyes are dim:—though rich the spot With every flow’r this earth has got, What is it to the nightingale, If there his darling rose is not?[330] In vain the Valley’s smiling throng Worship him, as he moves along; He heeds them not—one smile of hers Is worth a world of worshippers. They but the Star’s adorers are, She is the Heav’n that lights the Star!