Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain has tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;

That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!

A something light as air, -- a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken,--
O, love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken!

And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;

And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,

And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds, -- or like the stream,
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever,

Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods that part forever.

O you, that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound,
As in the Fields of Bliss above
He sits, with flowerets fettered round;--

Loose not a tie that round him clings,
Nor ever let him use his wings;
For even an hour, a minute's flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light.

Like that celestial bird, -- whose nest
Is found beneath far Eastern skies,--
Whose wings, though radiant when at rest,
Lose all their glory when he flies!