Poems (Frances Elizabeth Browne)/Pain and pleasure
PAIN AND PLEASURE.
How vain to look for happiness on earth!Friends drop around us, even from our birth,And could we be ourselves exempt from woe,Ah! still the tear of sympathy must flow.
Yet, O, the tear of sympathy is sweet!The painful heart-throb is with balm replete;Pleasure and pain here ever is combined,And tears give pleasure to a feeling mind.
Here, too, we cannot taste without alloyIntense sensations of delight and joy;Angels alone the heights of rapture know,And fallen angels feel the depths of woe!
Placed in a medium state, let us beware;Heaven be our hope, and virtue be our care,Pleasure encourage us our course to steer,And pain still warn us what we have to fear.