Slow, drop by drop, to pour
Our life's whole essence, perfumed through and through
With all the best we have, or can control,
For the libation; cast it down before
Your feet--then lift the goblet, dry for evermore!
I shall not die, as foolish lovers do:
A man's heart beats beneath this breast of mine;
The breast where--Curse on that fiend's whispering,
'_It might have been!_'--Ada, I will be true
Unto myself--the self that worshipped thine.
May all life's pain, like those few tears that spring
For me--glance off as rain-drops from my white dove's wing!
May you live long, some good man's bosom-flower,
And gather children round your matron knees!
Then, when all this is past, and you and I
Remember each our youth but as an hour
Of joy--or torture; one, serene, at ease,
May meet the other's grave yet steadfast eye,
Thinking, 'He loved me well!'--clasp hands, and so pass by.
THE TEARS OF OYSTERS.
Glancing round this anatomical workshop (the oyster), we find, amongst
other things, some preparations shewing the nature of pearls. Examine
them, and we find that there are dark and dingy pearls, just as there
are handsome and ugly men; the dark pearl being found on the dark
shell of the fish, the white brilliant one upon the smooth inside
shell.
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