“Ask not if such my love! Oh! trust the mind To grief so long, so silently resign’d! Let the light spirit, ne’er by sorrow taught The pure and lofty constancy of thought, Its fleeting trials eager to forget, Rise with elastic power o’er each regret! Foster’d in tears, _our_ young affection grew, And I have learn’d to suffer and be true. Deem not my love a frail, ephemeral flower, Nursed by soft sunshine and the balmy shower; No! ’tis the child of tempests, and defies, And meets unchanged, the anger of the skies! Too well I feel, with grief’s prophetic heart, That ne’er to meet in happier days we part. We part! and e’en this agonising hour, When love first feels his own o’erwhelming power, Shall soon to memory’s fix’d and tearful eye Seem almost happiness--for thou wert nigh! Yes! when this heart in solitude shall bleed, As days to days all wearily succeed, When doom’d to weep in loneliness, ’twill be Almost like rapture to have wept with thee! “But thou, my Hamet! thou canst yet bestow All that of joy my blighted lot can know. Oh! be thou still the high-soul’d and the brave, To whom my first and fondest vows I gave; In thy proud fame’s untarnish’d beauty still The lofty visions of my youth fulfil. So shall it soothe me, midst my heart’s despair, To hold undimm’d one glorious image there!” “Zayda, my best-beloved! my words too well, Too soon, thy bright illusions must dispel; Yet must my soul to thee unveil’d be shown, And all its dreams and all its passions known. Thou shalt not be deceived--for pure as heaven Is thy young love, in faith and fervour given. I said my heart was changed--and would thy thought Explore the ruin by thy kindred wrought, In fancy trace the land whose towers and fanes, Crush’d by the earthquake, strew its ravaged plains; And such that heart where desolation’s hand Hath blighted all that once was fair or grand! But Vengeance, fix’d upon her burning throne, Sits midst the wreck in silence and alone; And I, in stem devotion at her shrine, Each softer feeling, but my love, resign. Yes! they whose spirits all my thoughts control, Who hold dread converse with my thrilling soul; They, the betray’d, the sacrificed, the brave, Who fill a blood-stain’d and untimely grave, Must be avenged! and pity and remorse In that stem cause are banish’d from my course. Zayda! thou tremblest--and thy gentle breast Shrinks from the passions that destroy my rest; Yet shall thy form, in many a stormy hour, Pass brightly o’er my soul with softening power, And, oft recall’d, thy voice beguile my lot, Like some sweet lay, once heard, and ne’er forgot.