To bestow the soul away Is an idle duty-play!— Why, to trust a life-long bliss To caprices of a day, Scarce were more depraved than this! Men and maidens, see you mind it; Show of love, where’er you find it, Look if duty lurk behind it! Duty-fancies, urging on Whither love had never gone! Loving—if the answering breast Seem not to be thus possessed, Still in hoping have a care; If it do, beware, beware! But if in yourself you find it, Above all things—mind it, mind it! 1841 _LOVE AND REASON._ When panting sighs the bosom fill, And hands by chance united thrill At once with one delicious pain The pulses and the nerves of twain; When eyes that erst could meet with ease, Do seek, yet, seeking, shyly shun Extatic conscious unison,— The sure beginnings, say, be these Prelusive to the strain of love Which angels sing in heaven above? Or is it but the vulgar tune, Which all that breathe beneath the moon So accurately learn—so soon? With variations duly blent; Yet that same song to all intent, Set for the finer instrument; It is; and it would sound the same In beasts, were not the bestial frame, Less subtly organised, to blame; And but that soul and spirit add To pleasures, even base and bad, A zest the soulless never had. It may be—well indeed I deem; But what if sympathy, it seem, And admiration and esteem, Commingling therewithal, do make The passion prized for Reason’s sake? Yet, when my heart would fain rejoice, A small expostulating voice Falls in; Of this thou wilt not take Thy one irrevocable choice? In accent tremulous and thin I hear high Prudence deep within, Pleading the bitter, bitter sting, Should slow-maturing seasons bring, Too late, the veritable thing. For if (the Poet’s tale of bliss) A love, wherewith commeasured this Is weak and beggarly, and none, Exist a treasure to be won, And if the vision, though it stay, Be yet for an appointed day,— This choice, if made, this deed, if done, The memory of this present past, With vague foreboding might o’ercast The heart, or madden it at last.