Of all the nymphs so deckt and drest Like Venus of the starry train, She was the loveliest and the best, The pride and glory of the plain. O free from thy despotic sway This nymph of heaven-descended charms, Too soon she came this dusky way-- Restore thy captive to my arms! As by a stream's fair verdant side In myrtle shades she roved along, A serpent stung my blooming bride, This brightest of the female throng-- The venom hastening thro' her veins Forbade the freezing blood to flow. And thus she left the Thracian plains For these dejected groves below. Even thou may'st pity my sad pain, Since Love, as ancient stories say, Forced thee to leave thy native reign, And in Sicilian meadows stray: Bright Proserpine thy bosom fired, For her you sought unwelcome light, Madness and love in you conspired To seize her to the shades of night. But if, averse to my request, The banished nymph, for whom I mourn, Must in Plutonian chambers rest, And never to my arms return---- Take Orpheus too--his warm desire Can ne'er be quench'd by your decree: In life or death he must admire, He must adore Eurydicè! THE DESERTED FARM-HOUSE[36] This antique dome the insatiate tooth of time Now level with the dust has almost laid;-- Yet ere 'tis gone, I seize my humble theme From these low ruins, that his years have made. Behold the unsocial hearth!--where once the fires Blazed high, and soothed the storm-stay'd traveller's woes; See! the weak roof, that abler props requires, Admits the winds, and swift descending snows. Here, to forget the labours of the day, No more the swains at evening hours repair, But wandering flocks assume the well known way To shun the rigours of the midnight air. In yonder chamber, half to ruin gone, Once stood the ancient housewife's curtained bed-- Timely the prudent matron has withdrawn, And each domestic comfort with her fled. The trees, the flowers that her own hands had reared, The plants, the vines, that were so verdant seen,-- The trees, the flowers, the vines have disappear'd, And every plant has vanish'd from the green. So sits in tears on wide Campania's plain Rome, once the mistress of a world enslaved; That triumph'd o'er the land, subdued the main, And Time himself, in her wild transports, braved. So sits in tears on Palestina's shore The Hebrew town, of splendour once divine-- Her kings, her lords, her triumphs are no more; Slain are her priests, and ruin'd every shrine. Once, in the bounds of this deserted room, Perhaps some swain nocturnal courtship made, Perhaps some Sherlock mused amidst the gloom; Since Love and Death forever seek the shade.