Thinking her nature with her life was gone, No more to household tyranny a slave, A youth was crowning once the chiseled stone, That rose columnar o’er his step-dame’s grave. But as he leaned against its marble base, The pillar crushed him, toppling from its place. Ye step-sons, who would flee his wretched doom, Beware approaching e’en a step-dame’s _tomb_. Here is a thing or two, appertaining to love and women, and so forth, just as such things have been described since Adam first gazed in pleased astonishment upon Eve, “That would be woo’d, and not unsought be won,” “The amorous bird of night Sung spousal, and bid haste the evening star On his hill-top to light the bridal lamp.” A maiden kissed me at the evening hour With dewy lip--how honied was the kiss! Her mouth breathed nectar, and its balmy power Hath made me drunk with love’s bewildering bliss. I would I were a rose--that thy sweet hand Might gently place me on thy snowy breast-- Or sighing gale--for then my spirit bland On thy soft bosom would securely rest. Here follow a few melancholy breathings of that better part, which shone bright and burning while it lasted, though its food was error, and its end was death. Their aspirations after immortality were few and faint--for the very existence of another world was merely an assumption--a matter of speculation. An immortality of fame, to the sober eye, was not merely worthless, if acquired, but its acquisition was a thing of toil, and danger, and doubt. Robbed of the high aims and hopes for which it was made, “the chainless spirit of the eternal mind,” would stoop to no medium flight, but sunk in hopeless despondence, and like guilty Adam, “On the cold earth it lay, Oft cursing its Creator.” The light of reason did but make known their darkness, and ignorant of the unseen and the future, they clung with deep devotion to the visible and the present. Drink and be glad: for what’s to-morrow’s sun, Or what the future? No one knows--not one. Haste not, nor toil: but, as thou can’st be kind, Give, eat, deem all things mortal in thy mind. To live, or not to live--it’s an equal state, For life’s a feather in the scales of fate. Seize it--’tis thine--but if thou die--then what?-- Another has thine all--it matters not. How came I here? Whence am I, and for what? To go again. How know I, knowing nought? Nought before birth, I shall be such again, For less than nothing are the sons of men. But bring me wine--that fountain of relief-- That sparkling soother of distressing grief. Oh! swiftly flies the blooming hue, That doth the rose adorn, And then unto thy searching view, The rose is but a thorn.