LINES.

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BY L. J. CIST.

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They may talk as they will of “omnipotent love,”

And of lone disappointment’s sad lot⁠—

That the image once shrined we can never remove,

That the once loved may ne’er be forgot:

’Tis the talk of the silly, the childish, the weak,

For a man (though a lover) may still

The idol he worships, if faithless, forsake,

And the false one forget—if he will!

They say that the heart which once truly shall love,

With love must continue to burn,

Though the idol unworthy devotion shall prove,

And away from the altar we turn;

But ’tis false!—for in man there’s a spirit of hate,

When he wills it that spirit to move,

And ’twere then all as easy to hate and forget

As it were to remember and love!

What! think you forever to fetter the mind

In the meshes of love’s silken snare,

When the strong man awakes from his slumber, to find

His enchantments all vanish in air!

Ah no! he may mourn that his slumber is o’er,

He may weep that the dream was but vain,

But he starts up, resolved he will yield him no more

To that vision deceitful again.

There are monarch’s despotic, throned tyrants, by Fate,

And serfs there are millions, by birth;

But the slave of the cold and the heartless coquette

Is the veriest slave upon earth:

And for me, I were sooner the Autocrat’s thrall,

Or the lowliest slave in our land,

Than the tool of the flirt, at her feet still to fall,

And abjectly sue for her hand!