Thomas Moore

Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain had tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off,

Farewell, farewell to thee, Araby's daughter! Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea.

As sunshine broken in the rill, Though turned astray, is sunshine still.

Beholding heaven, and feeling hell.

Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!

Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye, But turn to ashes on the lips.

It is only to the happy that tears are a luxury.

Paradise itself were dim And joyless, if not shared with him!

Oh, ever thus, from childhood's hour, I 've seen my fondest hopes decay; I never loved a tree or flower But 't was the first to fade away. I never nurs'd a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye,

But the trail of the serpent is over them all.

Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years,— One minute of heaven is worth them all.

One morn a Peri at the gate Of Eden stood disconsolate.

Like the stain'd web that whitens in the sun, Grow pure by being purely shone upon.

Some flow'rets of Eden ye still inherit, But the trail of the serpent is over them all.

There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream, And the nightingale sings round it all the day long; In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream, To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.

But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last.

This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas, The past, the future,—two eternities!

Man for his glory To ancestry flies; But Woman's bright story Is told in her eyes.

Accurst is the march of that glory Which treads o'er the hearts of the free.

Ask a woman's advice, and, whate'er she advise, Do the very reverse and you're sure to be wise.

Love, nursed among pleasures, is faithless as they, But the love born of Sorrow, like Sorrow, is true.

My only books Were woman's looks, And folly's all they've taught me.

The light that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing.

No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.