My ever charming Anna! who alone Can all the frowns of cruel fate atone; Oh! while all-conscious Memory holds her power, Can I forget that sweetly-painful hour, When from those eyes, with lovely lightning fraught, My fluttering spirits first th’ infection caught? When, as I gazed, my faltering tongue betray’d The heart’s quick tumults, or refused its aid; While the dim light my ravished eyes forsook, And every limb, unstrung with terror, shook: With all her powers, dissenting Reason strove To tame at first the kindling flame of Love: She strove in vain; subdued by charms divine, My soul a victim fell at Beauty’s shrine. Oft from the din of bustling life I strayed, In happier scenes to see my lovely maid; Full oft, where Thames his wandering current leads, We roved at evening hour through flowery meads; There, while my heart’s soft anguish I revealed, To her with tender sighs my hope appealed: While the sweet nymph my faithful tale believed, Her snowy breast with secret tumult heaved; For, trained in rural scenes from earliest youth, Nature was her’s, and innocence, and truth: She never knew the city damsel’s art, Whose frothy pertness charms the vacant heart.— My suit prevail’d! for love informed my tongue, And on his votary’s lips persuasion hung. Her eyes with conscious sympathy withdrew, And o’er her cheek the rosy current flew. Thrice happy hours! where with no dark allay Life’s fairest sunshine gilds the vernal day: For here the sigh, that soft affection heaves, From stings of sharper woe the soul relieves: Elysian scenes! too happy long to last, Too soon a storm the smiling dawn o’ercast: Too soon some demon to my father bore The tidings, that his heart with anguish tore. My pride to kindle, with dissuasive voice Awhile he laboured to degrade my choice: Then, in the whirling wave of pleasure, sought From its loved object to divert my thought: With equal hope he might attempt to bind In chains of adamant the lawless wind; For Love had aimed the fatal shaft too sure, Hope fed the wound, and Absence knew no cure. With alienated look, each art he saw Still baffled by superior Nature’s law. His anxious mind on various schemes revolved, At last on cruel exile he resolved: The rigorous doom was fixed; alas! how vain To him of tender anguish to complain: His soul, that never Love’s sweet influence felt, By social sympathy could never melt; With stern command to Albert’s charge he gave To waft Palemon o’er the distant wave. “The ship was laden and prepared to sail, And only waited now the leading gale: ’Twas ours, in that sad period, first to prove, The poignant torments of despairing love; The impatient wish, that never feels repose, Desire, that with perpetual current flows!