'When my new mind had no infusion known, Thou gavest so deep a tincture of thine own, That ever since I vainly try To wash away the inherent dye: Long work, perhaps, may spoil thy colours quite, But never will reduce the native white. To all the ports of honour and of gain I often steer my course in vain; Thy gale comes cross, and drives me back again, Thou slacken'st all my nerves of industry, By making them so oft to be The tinkling strings of thy loose minstrelsy. Whoever this world's happiness would see Must as entirely cast off thee, As they who only heaven desire Do from the world retire. This was my error, this my gross mistake, Myself a demi-votary to make. Thus with Sapphira and her husband's fate, (A fault which I, like them, am taught too late,) For all that I give up I nothing gain, And perish for the part which I retain. Teach me not then, O thou fallacious Muse! The court and better king t' accuse; The heaven under which I live is fair, The fertile soil will a full harvest bear: Thine, thine is all the barrenness, if thou Makest me sit still and sing when I should plough. When I but think how many a tedious year Our patient sovereign did attend His long misfortune's fatal end; How cheerfully, and how exempt from fear, On the Great Sovereign's will he did depend, I ought to be accursed if I refuse To wait on his, O thou fallacious Muse! Kings have long hands, they say, and though I be So distant, they may reach at length to me. However, of all princes thou Shouldst not reproach rewards for being small or slow; Thou! who rewardest but with popular breath, And that, too, after death!' THE DESPAIR. 1 Beneath this gloomy shade, By Nature only for my sorrows made, I'll spend this voice in cries, In tears I'll waste these eyes, By love so vainly fed; So lust of old the deluge punished. Ah, wretched youth, said I; Ah, wretched youth! twice did I sadly cry; Ah, wretched youth! the fields and floods reply. 2 When thoughts of love I entertain, I meet no words but Never, and In vain: Never! alas! that dreadful name Which fuels the infernal flame: Never! my time to come must waste; In vain! torments the present and the past: In vain, in vain! said I, In vain, in vain! twice did I sadly cry; In vain, in vain! the fields and floods reply. 3 No more shall fields or floods do so, For I to shades more dark and silent go: All this world's noise appears to me A dull, ill-acted comedy: No comfort to my wounded sight, In the sun's busy and impert'nent light. Then down I laid my head, Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead, And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.