A something light as air—a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken— Oh! love, that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this hath shaken. And ruder words will soon rush in To spread the breach that words begin; And eyes forget the gentle ray, They wore in courtship's smiling day; And voices lose the tone that shed A tenderness round all they said: Till fast declining, one by one, The sweetnesses of love are gone, And hearts, so lately mingled, seem Like broken clouds—or like the stream, That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part for ever.
Moore.
Man is not an isolated creature : he is a link of one great and mighty chain, and each necessarily has a dependance upon the other. In society he is like the flower blown in its native bed; in solitude, like the blasted shrub of the desert—neither giving nor receiving support, the energies of his nature fail him; he droops, degenerates, and dies.
