Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers: Words giving tongue against her, like a hound At picking out a fault--words speaking daggers. The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers, To lash their tails, but not as horses do, Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers, But like a lion’s, ere he tears in two A black, to see if he is black all through. With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch, She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry, No sound--no stir--quite petrified, poor wretch! As when Apollo, in old allegory, Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone; In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry, Judge if a suing lover, let alone A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone. [Illustration: A POUTER.] “Ellen, I will no longer call you mine, That time is past, and ne’er can come again; However other lights undimmed may shine, And undiminishing, one truth is plain, Which I, alas! have learned,--that love can wane. The dream is pass’d away, the veil is rent, Your heart was not intended for my reign; A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant With one poor man in it to be content. “It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure, To wander underneath the whispering bough With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure. Nay, fear not,--I absolve of every vow,-- Use,--use your own celestial pleasure now, Your apogee and perigee arrange. Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how, To me that constant disk has nothing strange-- A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change. “Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write Such words unto you, with so hard a pen; Yet outraged love will change its nature quite, And turn like tiger hunted to its den-- How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men! And stands abash’d, discover’d, and forlorn! Had it been only cusp’d--but gibbous--then It had gone down--but Faith drew back in scorn, And would not swallow it--without a horn! “I am in occultation,--that is plain: My culmination’s past,--that’s quite as clear. But think not I will suffer your disdain To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear. Whate’er my pangs, they shall be buried here; No murmur,--not a sigh,--shall thence exhale: Smile on,--and for your own peculiar sphere Choose some eccentric path,--you cannot fail, And pray stick on a most portentous tail!