In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject of conversation, though with a Friend, are commonly the most prosaic and trivial of facts.  The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the character of individuals.  Our discourse all runs to slander, and our limits grow narrower as we advance.  How is it that we are impelled to treat our old Friends so ill when we obtain new ones?  The housekeeper says, I never had any new crockery in my life but I began to break the old.  I say, let us speak of mushrooms and forest trees rather.  Yet we can sometimes afford to remember them in private.

     Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,
     Whose features all were cast in Virtue’s mould,
     As one she had designed for Beauty’s toy,
     But after manned him for her own strong-hold.

     On every side he open was as day,
     That you might see no lack of strength within,
     For walls and ports do only serve alway
     For a pretence to feebleness and sin.

     Say not that Caesar was victorious,
     With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame,
     In other sense this youth was glorious,
     Himself a kingdom wheresoe’er he came.

     No strength went out to get him victory,
     When all was income of its own accord;
     For where he went none other was to see,
     But all were parcel of their noble lord.

     He forayed like the subtile haze of summer,
     That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes,
     And revolutions works without a murmur,
     Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.

     So was I taken unawares by this,
     I quite forgot my homage to confess;
     Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,
     I might have loved him had I loved him less.

     Each moment as we nearer drew to each,
     A stern respect withheld us farther yet,
     So that we seemed beyond each other’s reach,
     And less acquainted than when first we met.

     We two were one while we did sympathize,
     So could we not the simplest bargain drive;
     And what avails it now that we are wise,
     If absence doth this doubleness contrive?

     Eternity may not the chance repeat,
     But I must tread my single way alone,
     In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
     And know that bliss irrevocably gone.

     The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
     For elegy has other subject none;
     Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
     Knell of departure from that other one.

     Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;
     With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields;
     Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
     Than all the joys other occasion yields.

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     Is’t then too late the damage to repair? 
     Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
     The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
     But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.