Gone! thou too, Nancy! why should Heaven remove
Each tender object of my early love?
Why was I happy? O ye conscious rocks!
Was I not happy? When lone’s locks
Claspt round her neck and mine their golden chain,
Ambition, fame, and fortune, smiled in vain.
While warring winds with deafening fury blew,
Near, and more near, our cheeks, our bosoms, grew.
Wave after wave the lashing ocean chased,
She smiled, and prest me closer to her waist.
“Suppose this cave should crush us,” once I cried;
“It can not fall,” the loving maid replied.
“You, who are shorter, may be safe, I said;
“O let us fly!” exclaim’d the simple maid.
Springing, she drew me forward by the hand
Upon the sunny and the solid sand,
And then lookt round, with fearful doubt, to see
If what I spoke so seriously, could be.
Ah, memory, memory! thou alone canst save
Angelic beauty from the grasping grave.
Tho’ Nancy’s name for ever dwell unknown
Beyond her briar-bound sod and upright stone;
Yet, in the lover’s, in the poet’s eye,
The young lone hath not bloom’d to die.