I know 'twould grieve they gentle heart To feel that thou art all the cause, That these unnumbered tears now start In eyes which were, while hope yet was, As bright as ever Love lit up, To beam on Pleasure's sparkling cup.
My peace of mind forever fled, My hopes of future fame destroyed, My only tree of promise dead, Its fruit all blighted ere enjoyed, And gone the light that cheered my morn Of life, ere half its hours were worn.
Live thou unconscious of the grief A hopeless passion wakes in me; It would not yield my heart relief To know its pangs were shared by thee; Let me but feel thy bliss secure, And know no sorrows threaten thee, And I can unsubdued endure All Fortune's malice heaps on me.
But when some wild secluded spot Shall mark my life's eventless round; And when an humble lonely cot My once ambitious hopes shall bound; Oh! Rosa, let one sigh regret The hours that I can ne'er forget.
For scarcely entering on my prime of age, Grief marked me for her own. [_Camoens, by Lord Strangford_.
My education had been superintended exclusively by my mother. Under her intelligent control I had mastered the common rudiments of learning, and had acquired, from my intellectual association with her, a taste for poetry and light philosophy. I read every thing with an earnestness which knew no satiety. In my fifteenth year, my mind was a rude mass of incongruous erudition; possessing learning without accuracy, and information without wisdom. My character derived a rudeness from the unbroken solitude of my studies, taking, like the insect of the forest, the hue of the leaf on which it lived and banqueted. The "Book of Martyrs," awakened into melancholy the sympathies of my heart, and lashed into bitterness the fierce intolerance of my passions. I was religious only in the vengeance of persecution! How often have I felt, beneath the prayers of my mother, the gentleness of a hallowed contrition stealing over my proud heart. Alas! that this contagious sympathy should leave no impression; for I would return to my favorite feast of blood, and arise from its enjoyment a tyrant and a bigot.
The day on which I was sent to school, is deeply marked on my memory. The preparations for my departure, the advice of my mother, the remonstrances of my nurse, and the tears of Scipio, were the gloomy heralds of my utter desolation of heart. Our slaves, as I passed them in the chariot, left their work and ran to bless me. Many of them bade me farewell with struggling emotion, while several of the old ones told me to be of stout heart, and never forget that I was a Granby. I sobbed aloud in the fulness of my heart, when I gave them my hand. The sternness of manhood has never blushed for those tears.