Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love,
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus is chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted - ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from painting -
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
A dreary see now flows between; -
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder
Shall wholly do away, I ween,
The marks of that which once hath been
More verses by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Lines To W. L. While He Sang A Song To Purcell's Music
- On A Connubial Rupture In High Life
- Tell's Birth-Place. Imitated From Stolberg
- Sonnet Xi. To Sheridan
- Sonnet Xiii. To La Fayette