“And I will cross the whitening foam,
    And I will seek a foreign home;
    Till I forget a false fair face,
    I ne’er shall find a resting-place;
    My own dark thoughts I cannot shun,
    But ever love, and love but one.

    “I go—­but wheresoe’er I flee
    There’s not an eye will weep for me;
    There’s not a kind congenial heart,
    Where I can claim the meanest part;
    Nor thou, who hast my hopes undone,
    Wilt sigh, although I love but one.

    “To think of every early scene,
    Of what we are, and what we’ve been,
    Would whelm some softer hearts with woe—­
    But mine, alas! has stood the blow;
    Yet still beats on as it begun,
    And never truly loves but one.

    “And who that dear loved one may be
    Is not for vulgar eyes to see,
    And why that early love was crost,
    Thou know’st the best, I feel the most;
    But few that dwell beneath the sun
    Have loved so long, and loved but one.

    “I’ve tried another’s fetters, too,
    With charms, perchance, as fair to view;
    And I would fain have loved as well,
    But some unconquerable spell
    Forbade my bleeding breast to own
    A kindred care for aught but one.

    “’Twould soothe to take one lingering view,
    And bless thee in my last adieu;
    Yet wish I not those eyes to weep
    For him that wanders o’er the deep;
    His home, his hope, his youth, are gone,
    Yet still he loves, and loves but one."[110]

While thus, in all the relations of the heart, his thirst after affection was thwarted, in another instinct of his nature, not less strong—­the desire of eminence and distinction—­he was, in an equal degree, checked in his aspirings, and mortified.  The inadequacy of his means to his station was early a source of embarrassment and humiliation to him; and those high, patrician notions of birth in which he indulged but made the disparity between his fortune and his rank the more galling.  Ambition, however, soon whispered to him that there were other and nobler ways to distinction.  The eminence which talent builds for itself might, one day, he proudly felt, be his own; nor was it too sanguine to hope that, under the favour accorded usually to youth, he might with impunity venture on his first steps to fame.  But here, as in every other object of his heart, disappointment and mortification awaited him.  Instead of experiencing the ordinary forbearance, if not indulgence, with which young aspirants for fame are received by their critics, he found himself instantly the victim of such unmeasured severity as is not often dealt out even to veteran offenders in literature; and, with a heart fresh from the trials of disappointed love, saw those resources and consolations which he had sought in the exercise of his intellectual strength also invaded.

While thus prematurely broken into the pains of life, a no less darkening effect was produced upon him by too early an initiation into its pleasures.  That charm with which the fancy of youth invests an untried world was, in his case, soon dissipated.  His passions had, at the very onset of their career, forestalled the future; and the blank void that followed was by himself considered as one of the causes of that melancholy, which now settled so deeply into his character.