My equal liberty, and not repine! 
      For I had made thee, infant as thou art,
      Queen of my hopes, my leisure, and my heart;
      Given thee its happiest laugh, its sweetest tear,
      And all I found or conquer’d every year.

    “I blame me now I let thy sports offend
      Old Time, and laid thy snare within his path
      To make him falter, as it often hath;
      For he grew angry soon, and held his breath,
      And hurried on, in frightful league with Death,
    To make the way through which my footsteps bend,
    Late rich in all that social scenes attend,
      A desert; and with thee I droop, I die,
      Beneath the look of his malignant eye.

    “Me do triumphant heroes call
    To grace with harp their festal hall? 
    O! must my voice awake the song?—­
    My skill the artful tale prolong? 
    Yes!  I am call’d—­it is my doom! 
    Unhappily, ye know not whom,
    Nor what, impatient ye demand! 
    How hostile now the fever’d hand,
    Across these chords unwilling thrown,
    To echo plainings of my own! 
    Little indeed can ye divine
    What song ye ask who call for mine!

    “Till now, before the courtly crowd
    I humbly and I gaily bow’d;
    The blush was not to shame allied
      Which on my glowing cheek I wore;
    No lowly seemings pain’d nay pride,
      My heart was laughing at the core;
    And sometimes, as the stream of song
    Bore me with eddying haste along,
    My father’s spirit would arise,
    And speak strange meaning from these eyes,
    At which a conscious cheek would quail,
    A stern and lofty bearing fail: 
    Then could a chieftain condescend
    In me to recognize his friend! 
    Then could a warrior low incline
    His eye, when it encounter’d mine! 
    A tone can make the guilty start! 
    A glance can pierce the conscious heart,
    Encountering memory in its flight,
    Most waywardly!  Such wounds are slight;
    But I withdraw the painful light!

      “Fair lords and princes! many a time
    For you I wove my pictur’d rhyme;
    Refin’d new thoughts and fancies crude
    In deep and careful solitude;
    ’And, when my task was finish’d, came
    To seek the meed of praise or blame;
    While, even then, untir’d I strove
    To serve beneath the yoke of love. 
    Whene’er I mark’d a fearful look,
    When pride, or when resentment, spoke,
    I bent the tenor of my strain,
    And trembled lest it were in vain. 
    By many an undiscover’d wile
    I brought the pallid lip to smile,
    Clear’d the maz’d thought for ampler scope,
    Sustain’d the flagging wings of hope;
    And threw a mantle over care
    Such as the blooming Graces wear! 
    I made the friend resist his pride,