Oh! misery, for the young heart doomed
To waste and weep its youth away,
To be within itself entombed,
And desperate with the long decay!
Yes, misery! but there may be
A yet more desperate despair;
There is a love whose misery
Mocks all those cells may soothe and share.
There the pale nun at least can keep
One treasured and unbroken dream;
The love for which she wakes to weep,
Seems ever what it once could seem.
She knows not time's uncharming touch
Destroying every early hue;
The false!—she dreameth not of such—
Her love is still the deep, the true.
Not so the love of common life,
'Tis coloured by the common air;
Its atmosphere with death is rife,
A moral pestilence is there.
Fevered—exacting—false and vain,
Like a disease, it lingers on,
Though all that blest its first sweet reign,
Its morning dew and light, are gone.
Such is the actual life of love,
Such is the love that I have known;
Unworthy of the heaven above—
Dust, like the earth where it has grown.
Ah! better far alone to dwell,
Dreaming above the dearest past,
And keeping in the silent cell,
Life's best illusions to the last.
17
