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11.

Ah! who would taste your self-deluding joys, That lure the unwary to a wretched doom,

That bid fair views and flattering hopes arise, Then hurl them headlong to a lasting tomb? What is the charm which leads thy victims on To persevere in paths that lead to woe? What can induce them in that rout to go, In which in-numerous before have gone, And died in misery, poor and woe-begone.

III..

Yet can I ask what charms in thee are found;

I, who have drank from thine etherial rill,
And tasted all the pleasures that abound
Upon Parnassus, lov'd Aonian hill?

I, thro' whose soul the muses' strains aye thrill! Oh! I do feel the spell with which I'm tied;

And tho' our annals fearful stories tell,

How Savage languish'd, and how Otway died,
Yet must I persevere, let whate'er will betide.

SONG.

WRITTEN AT THE AGE or FOURTEEN.

I.

SOFTLY, softly blow, ye breezes,
Gently o'er my Edwy fly!

Lo! he slumbers, slumbers sweetly;
Softly, zephyrs, pass him by!
My love is asleep,

He lies by the deep,

All along where the salt waves sigh.

II.

I have cover'd him with rushes,
Water-flags, and branches dry.
Edwy, long have been thy slumbers;
Edwy, Edwy, ope thine eye!
My love is asleep,

He lies by the deep,

All along where the salt waves sigh.

III.

Still he sleeps; he will not waken,

Fastly closed is his eye;

Paler is his cheek, and chiller

Than the icy moon on high.

Alas! he is dead,

He has chose his death-bed

All along where the salt waves sigh.

IV.

Is it, is it so, my Edwy?

Will thy slumbers never fly?

Could'st thou think I would survive thee?

No, my love, thou bid'st me die.

Thou bid'st me seek

Thy death-bed bleak

All along where the salt waves sigh.

V.

I will gently kiss thy cold lips,
On thy breast I'll lay my head,
And the winds shall sing our death-dirge,
And our shroud the waters spread;
The moon will smile sweet,

And the wild wave will beat,

Oh! so softly o'er our lonely bed.

TO LOVE.

I.

WHY should I blush to own I love? "Tis Love that rules the realms above. Why should I blush to say to all, That Virtue holds my heart in thrall?

II.

Why should I seek the thickest shade, Lest Love's dear secret be betrayed? Why the stern brow deceitful move, When I am languishing with love?

II.

Is it weakness thus to dwell

On passion, that I dare not tell? Such weakness I would ever piove : 'Tis painful, tho' 'tis sweet, to love.

THE WANDERING BOY.

A SONG.

I.

WHEN the winter wind whistles along the wild moor,
And the cottager shuts on the beggar his door;
When the chilling tear stands in my comfortless eye!
Oh, how hard is the lot of the wandering boy!

II.

The winter is cold, and I have no vest,

And my heart it is cold as it beats in my breast;
No father, no mother, no kindred have I,

For I am a parentless wandering boy.

III.

Yet I had a home, and I once had a sire,

A mother, who granted each infant desire;
Our cottage it stood in a wood-embower'd vale,
Where the ring-dove would warble its sorrowful tale.

IV.

But my father and mother were summon'd away,
And they left me to hard-hearted strangers a prey;
I fled from their rigour with many a sigh,
And now I'm a poor little wandering boy.

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