Sixteen was then our utmost age,

Two years have lingering past away, love! And now new thoughts our minds engage, At least I feel disposed to stray, love!

'Tis I that am alone to blame,

I, that am guilty of love's treason; Since your sweet breast is still the same, Caprice must be my only reason.

I do not, love! suspect your truth,
With jealous doubt my bosom heaves not;
Warm was the passion of my youth,
One trace of dark deceit it leaves not.

No, no, my flame was not pretended;
For, oh! I loved you most sincerely;
And though our dream at last is ended-
My bosom still esteems you dearly.

No more we meet in yonder bowers;
Absence has made me prone to roving;

But older, firmer hearts than ours
Have found monotony in loving.

Your check's soft bloom is unimpair'd,
New beauties still are daily bright'ning,
Your eye for conquest beams prepared,

The forge of love's resistless lightning.

Arm'd thus, to make their bosoms bleed, Many will throng to sigh like me, love! More constant they may prove, indeed; Fonder, alas they ne'er can be, love!

LINES ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG LADY.

[As the author was discharging his pistols in a garden, two ladies passing near the spot were alarmed by the sound of a bullet hissing near them; to one of whom the following stanzas were addressed the next morning.]1

DOUBTLESS, Sweet girl! the hissing lead,
Wafting destruction o'er thy charms,
And hurtling 2 o'er thy lovely head,
Has fill'd that breast with fond alarms.

Surely some envious demon's force,
Vex'd to behold such beauty here,
Impell'd the bullet's viewless course,
Diverted from its first career.

Yes! in that nearly fatal hour

The ball obey'd some hell-born guide;
But Heaven, with interposing power,
In pity turn'd the death aside.

Yet, as perchance one trembling tear
Upon that thrilling bosom fell;
Which I, th' unconscious cause of fear,
Extracted from its glistening cell:

Say, what dire penance can atone
For such an outrage done to thee?
Arraign'd before thy beauty's throne,
What punishment wilt thou decree ?

[The occurrence took place at Southwell, and the beautiful lady to whom the lines were addressed was Miss Houson.]

2 This word is used by Gray, in his poem to the Fatal Sisters: "Iron sleet of arrowy shower

Hurtles through the darken'd air."

Might I perform the judge's part,
The sentence I should scarce deplore;
It only would restore a heart

Which but belong'd to thee before.

The least atonement I can make
Is to become no longer free;
Henceforth I breathe but for thy sake,
Thou shalt be all in all to me.

But thou, perhaps, may'st now reject
Such expiation of my guilt;
Come then, some other mode elect;
Let it be death, or what thou wilt.

Choose then, relentless! and I swear
Nought shall thy dread decree prevent;
Yet hold one little word forbear!

Let it be aught but banishment.

LOVE'S LAST ADIEU.

Αει, δ' αει με φευγει. ANACREON.

THE roses of love glad the garden of life,
Though nurtured 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,
Till time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
Or prunes them for ever, in love's last adieu !

In vain with endearments we soothe the sad heart,
In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
Or death disunite us in love's last adieu !

Still Hope, breathing peace through the grief-swollen breast,

Will whisper, "Our meeting we yet may renew: With this dream of deceit half our sorrow's represt, Nor taste we the poison of love's last adieu!

Oh! mark you yon pair: in the sunshine of youth Love twined round their childhood his flow'rs as they grew;

They flourish awhile in the season of truth,

Till chill'd by the winter of love's last adieu !

Sweet lady! why thus doth a tear steal its way Down a cheek which outrivals thy bosom in hue? Yet why do I ask? — to distraction a prey,

Thy reason has perish'd with love's last adieu !

Oh! who is yon misanthrope, shunning mankind?
From cities to caves of the forest he flew :
There, raving, he howls his complaint to the wind;
The mountains reverberate love's last adieu !

Now hate rules a heart which in love's easy chains
Once passion's tumultuous blandishments knew ;
Despair now inflames the dark tide of his veins ;
He ponders in frenzy on love's last adieu !

How he envies the wretch with a soul wrapt in steel!
His pleasures are scarce, yet his troubles are few,

Who laughs at the pang that he never can feel,
And dreads not the anguish of love's last adieu!

Youth flies, life decays, even hope is o'ercast;
No more with love's former devotion we sue :
He spreads his young wing, he retires with the blast;
The shroud of affection is love's last adieu !

In this life of probation for rapture divine,
Astrea declares that some penance is due;
From him who has worshipp'd at love's gentle shrine,
The atonement is ample in love's last adieu !

Who kneels to the god, on his altar of light
Must myrtle and cypress alternately strew:
His myrtle, an emblem of purest delight;
His cypress, the garland of love's last adieu!

DAMÆTAS.

In law an infant, 1 and in years a boy,
Jn mind a slave to every vicious joy;
From every sense of shame and virtue wean'd;
In lies an adept, in deceit a fiend;

Versed in hypocrisy, while yet a child;
Fickle as wind, of inclinations wild:
Woman his dupe, his heedless friend a tool;

Old in the world, though scarcely broke from school;
Damætas ran through all the maze of sin,
And found the goal when others just begin:
Even still conflicting passions shake his soul,
And bid him drain the dregs of pleasure's bowl;
But, pall'd with vice, he breaks his former chain,
And what was once his bliss appears his bane. 2

In law every person is an infant who has not attained the age of twenty-one.

2["When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow-wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford- wretched from some private domestic circumstances of different kinds; and, consequently, about as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop."-Diary. Mr. Moore adds, "The sort of life which young Byron led at this period, between the dissipations of London and of Cambridge, without a home to wel