23
If o'er his sense one transient slumber steals,
Some hideous woe his frighted fancy feels:
Perchance, to pointed rocks or desarts led,
He views the tempest blacken round his head;
Or cast into the deep's expanded jaws,
With struggles faint, his parting breath he draws;
Or in some dungeon, horrible, confin'd,
A thousand ghastly phantoms scare his mind.
"O touch me not," he cries, "Aveng'd thou art!
"Behold the dagger in my bleeding heart!
"Cast not those sad reproachful looks on me;
"Thou cou'dst not feel what I have felt for thee!"
Then wakes—starts up—yet still finds no relief,
But true despair for visionary grief.
Oh happy he, whom Virtue doth secure,
Whose spotless soul is like the heav'ns pure!
Thrice happy he, that never knew deceit,
Or felt his heart with one rude passion beat;
Some hideous woe his frighted fancy feels:
Perchance, to pointed rocks or desarts led,
He views the tempest blacken round his head;
Or cast into the deep's expanded jaws,
With struggles faint, his parting breath he draws;
Or in some dungeon, horrible, confin'd,
A thousand ghastly phantoms scare his mind.
"O touch me not," he cries, "Aveng'd thou art!
"Behold the dagger in my bleeding heart!
"Cast not those sad reproachful looks on me;
"Thou cou'dst not feel what I have felt for thee!"
Then wakes—starts up—yet still finds no relief,
But true despair for visionary grief.
Oh happy he, whom Virtue doth secure,
Whose spotless soul is like the heav'ns pure!
Thrice happy he, that never knew deceit,
Or felt his heart with one rude passion beat;
