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Gave a right pleasant and bewitching tone
To each wild vagrant blast.
Meseems,
After this wondrous guise, that maiden sweet
Stood visible before me, while the beams
Of Dian pale, laughed round her little feet
With icy lustre, through the narrow pane;
And this discourse she held in merry vein;
Although methought 'twas counterfeited, and
The matter strange, that none might understand.
She told me, that the moon was in her wane—
And life was tiding on, and that the world
Was waxen old—that nature grew unkind,
And men grew selfish quite, and sore bechurled—
That Honour was a bubble of the mind—
And Virtue was a nothing undefined—
And as for Woman, She, indeed, could claim
A title all her own—She had a name
And place in Time's long chronicles, Deceit—
And Glory was a phantom—Death a cheat!
She said I might remember her, for she
Had trifled with me in mine infancy;
And in those days, that now are long agone,
