Poems (Davidson)/The Bachelor

by Lucretia Maria Davidson

THE BACHELOR.

To the world (whose dread laugh he would tremble to hear,
From whose scorn he would shrink with a cowardly fear)
The old bachelor proudly and boldly will say,
Single lives are the longest, single lives are most gay.

To the ladies, with pride, he will always declare,
That the links in love's chain are strife, trouble, and care;
That a wife is a torment, and he will have none,
But at pleasure will roam through the wide world alone.

And let him pass on, in his sulky of state;
O say, who would envy that mortal his fate?
To brave all the ills of life's tempest alone,
Not a heart to respond the warm notes of his own.

His joys undivided no longer will please;
The warm tide of his heart through inaction will freeze:
His sorrows concealed, and unanswered his sighs,
The old bachelor curses his folly, and dies.

Pass on, then, proud lone one, pass on to thy fate;
Thy sentence is sealed, thy repentance too late;
Like an arrow, which leaves not a trace on the wind,
No mark of thy pathway shall linger behind.

Not a sweet voice shall murmur its sighs o'er thy tomb;
Not a fair hand shall teach thy lone pillow to bloom;
Not a kind tear shall water thy dark, lonely bed:
By the living 'twas scorned, 'tis refused to the dead.