Why must my pen the noble praise deny,
Which virtue, worth, and honor _should_ supply?
O youth beloved! what pangs my breast has borne
To find thee false, ungrateful, and forsworn!
A shade and darkness o'er my prospect spreads,
The damps of night and death's eternal shades.
The scorpion's sting, by disappointment brought,
And all the horrors of despairing thought,
Sad as they are, I might, perhaps, endure,
And bear with patience what admits no cure.
But here my bosom is to madness moved;
I suffer by the wrongs of him I loved.
O, had I died by pitying Heaven's decree,
Nor proved so black, so base, a mind in thee!
But vain the wish; my heart was doomed to prove
Each torturing pang, but not one joy of love.
Wouldst thou again fallacious prospects spread,
And woo me from the confines of the dead?
The pleasing scenes that charmed me once retrace--
Gay scenes of rapture and ecstatic bliss?
How did my heart embrace the dear deceit,
And fondly cherish the deluding cheat!
Delusive hope, and wishes sadly vain,
Unless to sharpen disappointment's pain.
These are but the fragmentary proofs of her poetic ability; still they
are the most that have been preserved bearing _full authenticity_; yet
these betray a skilful and accustomed pen, though stamped with the
bitterness of woe.
Here, then, we will take up the idea which we left several pages back,
in order to introduce a quotation from a volume of singular power in
behalf of those thus gifted, who are every where looked upon with some
degree of suspicion at least, as I find our heroine was even long before
she wandered from the path of virtue.
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