7.
Ye dreams of my boyhood, how much I regret you!
Unfaded your memory dwells in my breast;[1]
Though sad and deserted, I ne'er can forget you:
Your pleasures may still be in fancy possest.
8.
To Ida full oft may remembrance restore me,[2]
While Fate shall the shades of the future unroll!
Since Darkness o'ershadows the prospect before me,
More dear is the beam of the past to my soul!
9.
But if, through the course of the years which await me,
Some new scene of pleasure should open to view,
I will say, while with rapture the thought shall elate me,
"Oh! such were the days which my infancy knew."[3]
- ↑
As your memory beams through this agoniz'd breast;
Thus sad and deserted, I ne'er can forget you,
Though this heart throbs to bursting by anguish possest.—[4to]
Your memory beams through this agonized breast.—[P. on V. Occasions.] - ↑
I thought this poor brain, fever'd even to madness,
Of tears as of reason for ever was drained;
But the drops which now flow down this bosom of sadness,
Convince me the springs have some moisture retain'd.
Sweet scenes of my childhood! your blest recollection,
Has wrung from these eyelids, to weeping long dead,
In torrents, the tears of my warmest affection,
The last and the fondest, I ever shall shed.—[4to. P. on V. Occasions.] - ↑ [Stanzas 8 and 9 first appeared in Hours of Idleness.]
