5
To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end"?

Ah! let us make no claim,
On life's incognisable deg. sea, deg.8
To too exact a steering of our way;
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim, 10
If some fair coast have lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail'd us to keep company.

Ay! we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule.
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain 15
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had lief remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

No! as the foaming swath
Of torn-up water, on the main, 20
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow'd path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore, deg. deg.23
And never touches the ship-side again;

Even so we leave behind, 25
As, charter'd by some unknown Powers
We stem deg. across the sea of life by night deg.27
The joys which were not for our use design'd;--
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours. 30

ISOLATION

TO MARGUERITE

Yes deg.! in the sea of life enisled, deg.1
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live _alone_.
The islands feel the enclasping flow, 5
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon deg. their hollows lights, deg.7
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing; 10
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour--

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were 15
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain--
Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order'd, that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd? 20
Who renders vain their deep desire?--
A God, a God their severance ruled!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The