Stanzas To Augusta.[n][77]

I.     Though the day of my Destiny's over,     And the star of my Fate hath declined,[o]     Thy soft heart refused to discover     The faults which so many could find;     Though thy Soul with my grief was acquainted,     It shrunk not to share it with me,     And the Love which my Spirit hath painted[p]     It never hath found but in Thee. II.     Then when Nature around me is smiling,[78]     The last smile which answers to mine,     I do not believe it beguiling,[q]     Because it reminds me of thine;     And when winds are at war with the ocean,     As the breasts I believed in with me,[r]     If their billows excite an emotion,     It is that they bear me from Thee. III.     Though the rock of my last Hope is shivered,[s]     And its fragments are sunk in the wave,     Though I feel that my soul is delivered     To Pain - it shall not be its slave.     There is many a pang to pursue me:     They may crush, but they shall not contemn;     They may torture, but shall not subdue me;     'Tis of Thee that I think - not of them.[t] IV.     Though human, thou didst not deceive me,     Though woman, thou didst not forsake,     Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,     Though slandered, thou never couldst shake;[u][79]     Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,     Though parted, it was not to fly,     Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,     Nor, mute, that the world might belie.[v] V.     Yet I blame not the World, nor despise it,     Nor the war of the many with one;     If my Soul was not fitted to prize it,     'Twas folly not sooner to shun:[80]     And if dearly that error hath cost me,     And more than I once could foresee,     I have found that, whatever it lost me,[w]     It could not deprive me of Thee. VI.     From the wreck of the past, which hath perished,[x]     Thus much I at least may recall,     It hath taught me that what I most cherished     Deserved to be dearest of all:     In the Desert a fountain is springing,[y][81]     In the wide waste there still is a tree,     And a bird in the solitude singing,     Which speaks to my spirit of Thee.[82]     July 24, 1816.                 [First published, Prisoner of Chillon, etc., 1816.]