To which his fatal hand had sped her flight—­
    Behold yon hapless three, by passion lost,
    Procris, and Artemisia’s royal ghost;
    And her, whose son (his mother’s grief and joy)
    Razed with paternal rage the walls of Troy,—­
    Another triple sisterhood is seen;
    This characters of Hades.  Mark their mien
    With sin distain’d:  their downcast looks disclose
    A conscience of their crimes, and dread of coming woes.—­
    Semiramis, and Byblis (famed of old)
    Her mother’s rival there you next behold;
    With many a warrior, many a lovely dame
    Of old, ennobled by romantic fame.—­
    There Lancelot and Tristram (famed in fight)
    Are seen, with many a dame and errant knight;—­
    Genevra, Belle Isonde, and hundreds more;
    With those who mingled their incestuous gore
    Shed by paternal rage; and chant beneath,
    In baneful symphony, the Song of Death.” 
    He scarce had spoken, when a chill presage
    (What warriors feel before the battle’s rage,
    When in the angry trump’s sonorous breath
    They hear, before it comes, the sound of Death)
    My heart possess’d; and, tinged with deadly pale,
    I seem’d escaped from Death’s eternal jail;
    When, fleeting to my side with looks of Love,
    A phantom brighter than the Cyprian dove
    My fingers clasp’d; which, though of power to wield
    The temper’d sabre in the bloody field
    Against an armed foe, a touch subdued;
    And gentle words, and looks that fired the blood,
    My friend addressed me (I remember well),
    And from his lips these dubious accents fell:—­
    “Converse with whom you please, for all the train
    Are mark’d alike the slaves of Cupid’s reign.”—­
    Thus, in security and peace trepann’d,
    I was enlisted in that wayward band,
    Who short-lived joys by anguish long obtain,
    And whom the pleasures of a rival pain
    More than their proper joys.  Remembrance shows
    Too clear at last the source of all my woes,
    When Jealousy, and Love, and Envy drew
    That nurture from my heart by which they grew. 
    As feverish eyes on air-drawn features dwell,
    My fascinated eyes, by magic spell,
    Dwell’d on the heavenly form with ardent look,
    And at a glance the dire contagion took
    That tinged my days to come; and each delight,
    But those that bore her stamp, consign’d to night. 
    I blush with shame when to my inward view
    The devious paths return where Cupid drew
    His willing slave, with all my hopes and fears—­
    When Phoebus seem’d to rise and set in tears
    For many a spring—­and when I used to dwell
    A lonely hermit in a silent cell. 
    How upwards oft I traced the purling rills
    To their pure fountains in the misty hills! 
    The rocks I used to climb, the solemn woods,