Fragment of a Love Elegy

Curse on those hours, which once I us'd to bless, Hours that for ever on my memory press, When my young heart, awake to honest love, First caught th' infection Time can ne'er remove! No coxcomb, proud to charm an artless maid; No rake, that wish'd her innocence betray'd; No wordling, whose mean soul, resign'd to pelf, Courted vile gold; but fond of her herself, To win her heart I made my only care, And once believ'd I had an int'rest there. Hap'ly I had: and yet, oh sad reverse! To lose that interest, made it more my curse. Why didst thou, Fortune, throw me in her way, Just long enough to steal my soul away? Or why, that done, did adverse fate ordain, Distant, as North from South, we should remain? And why, O why, did absence, fickle Fair, Root from thy heart what Love had planted there? That day I well remember, when I first Heard my doom seal'd:—That day be ever curst! Long had I thought my soul's first wishes crost, Long, long, 'tis true, had giv'n up all for lost; Yet still, in spite of Reason's sage controul, Some rays of hope shot faintly through my soul.