Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.
Yet do thou glory in thy choice.
Thy choice of his good fortune boast;
I 'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice,
To see him gain what I have lost;
The height of my disdain shall be,
To laugh at him, to blush for thee;
To love thee still, but go no more
A begging to a beggar's door.
SIR ROBERT AYTON.
TIME'S REVENGE.
She, who but late in beauty's flower was seen,
Proud of her auburn curls and noble mien--
Who froze my hopes and triumphed in my fears,
Now sheds her graces in the waste of years.
Changed to unlovely is that breast of snow,
And dimmed her eye, and wrinkled is her brow;
And querulous the voice by time repressed,
Whose artless music stole me from my rest.
Age gives redress to love; and silvery hair
And earlier wrinkles brand the haughty fair.
From the Greek of AGATHIAS.
Translation of ROBERT BLAND.
THE DREAM.
Our life is twofold; sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past,--they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power,--
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not,--what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by.
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