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Title: Ill Omens
Author: Thomas Moore [
More Titles by Moore]
When daylight was yet sleeping under the billow,
And stars in the heavens still lingering shone.
Young Kitty, all blushing, rose up from her pillow,
The last time she e'er was to press it alone.
For the youth! whom she treasured her heart and her soul in,
Had promised to link the last tie before noon;
And when once the young heart of a maiden is stolen
The maiden herself will steal after it soon.
As she looked in the glass, which a woman ne'er misses.
Nor ever wants time for a sly glance or two,
A butterfly,[1] fresh from the night-flower's kisses.
Flew over the mirror, and shaded her view.
Enraged with the insect for hiding her graces,
She brushed him--he fell, alas; never to rise:
"Ah! such," said the girl, "is the pride of our faces,
"For which the soul's innocence too often dies."
While she stole thro' the garden, where heart's-ease was growing,
She culled some, and kist off its night-fallen dew;
And a rose, further on, looked so tempting and glowing,
That, spite of her haste, she must gather it too:
But while o'er the roses too carelessly leaning,
Her zone flew in two, and the
heart's-ease was lost:
"Ah! this means," said the girl
(and she sighed at its meaning),
"That love is scarce worth the
repose it will cost!"
NOTE:
[1] An emblem of the soul.
[The end]
Thomas Moore's poem: Ill Omens
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