d with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought--and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorb'd in thine; the world was pass'd away;
_Thou_ didst annihilate the earth to me!"
"_The Lament of Tasso._"

A short time after, having described the charm of the pine forest at
Ravenna, seen by twilight, he begins to paint the happiness of two
loving hearts--of Juan and Haidee, and says:--

VIII.

"Young Juan and his lady-love were left
To their own hearts' most sweet society;
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft
With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms.
* * * * * * *
They could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing.

IX.

"Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their
Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail!
The blank gray was not made to blast their hair,
But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail,
They were all summer; lightning might assail
And shiver them to ashes, but to trail
A long and snake-like life of dull decay
Was not for them--they had too little clay.

X.

"They were alone once more; for them to be
Thus was another Eden; they were never
Weary, unless when separate: the tree
Cut from its forest root of years--the river
Damn'd from its fountain--the child from the knee
And breast maternal wean'd at once forever,--
Would wither less than these two torn apart;
Alas! there is no instinct like the heart.

XII.

"'Whom the gods love die young,' was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more--
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,
Except mere breath;
* * * * * * *
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over, may be meant to save.

XIII.

"Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead.
The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for them:
They found no fault with Time, save that he fled;
They saw not in themselves aught to condemn;
Each was the other's mirror.
* * * * * * *

XVI.

"Moons changing had roll'd on, and changeless