O ye! whose melting hearts are form'd to prove 500 The trembling ecstasies of genuine love; When, with delicious agony, the thought Is to the verge of high delirium wrought: Your secret sympathy alone can tell What raptures then the throbbing bosom swell: O'er all the nerves what tender tumults roll, While love with sweet enchantment melts the soul. "In transport lost, by trembling hope imprest, The blushing virgin sunk upon my breast, While hers congenial beat with fond alarms; 510 Dissolving softness! Paradise of charms! Flash'd from our eyes, in warm transfusion flew Our blending spirits that each other drew! O bliss supreme! where virtue's self can melt With joys that guilty pleasure never felt; Form'd to refine the thought with chaste desire, And kindle sweet affection's purest fire. Ah! wherefore should my hopeless love, she cries,-- While sorrow bursts with interrupting sighs,-- For ever destined to lament in vain, 520 Such nattering, fond ideas entertain? My heart through scenes of fair illusion stray'd, To joys decreed for some superior maid. 'Tis mine, abandon'd to severe distress, Still to complain, and never hope redress-- Go then, dear youth! thy father's rage atone, And let this tortured bosom beat alone. The hovering anger yet thou mayst appease: Go then, dear youth! nor tempt the faithless seas. Find out some happier maid, whose equal charms 530 With fortune's fairer joys may bless thy arms: Where, smiling o'er thee with indulgent ray, Prosperity shall hail each new-born day: Too well thou know'st good Albert's niggard fate Ill fitted to sustain thy father's hate. Go then, I charge thee by thy generous love, That fatal to my father thus may prove; On me alone let dark affliction fall, Whose heart for thee will gladly suffer all. Then haste thee hence, Palemon, ere too late, 540 Nor rashly hope to brave opposing fate. "She ceased: while anguish in her angel-face O'er all her beauties shower'd celestial grace: Not Helen, in her bridal charms array'd, Was half so lovely as this gentle maid.-- O soul of all my wishes! I replied, Can that soft fabric stem affliction's tide? Canst thou, bright pattern of exalted truth, To sorrow doom the summer of thy youth, And I, ingrateful! all that sweetness see 550 Consign'd to lasting misery for me? Sooner this moment may the eternal doom Palemon in the silent earth entomb: Attest, thou moon, fair regent of the night! Whose lustre sickens at this mournful sight: By all the pangs divided lovers feel, Which sweet possession only knows to heal;