Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ABELARD TO HELOISE. §Ltt (Epistk. My thoughts fly to thee ever and again, Though disunited we must e'er remain ; For chilling dews hang o'er my harass'd brain. Ills cling to me like leeches to the blood, And my mind's left to chew the bitter cud Of deep reflection;—much I could reveal, I ut cannot picture half I think and feel. In you my spirits sweet refreshment find, To you I freely pour out all my mind : Remembrance crowds her sails,—dwells on the past, But, 'bove all others, you are first and last. What dreams delirious haunt my feverish head ! Disturb my slumbers, and arouse from bed ! At this still meditative hour of night, What shadowy visions flit before my sight! What means this resurrection of the past, This tide of memory that flows so fast? Still do I breathe in these monastic cells Of lonely solitude ? my bosom swells, And conscience plunges me in depths of woe, And fancy pictures even you my foe ; Whilst scalding tears still from their fountains flow : To you I will unburthen all my mind, Speak all the sorrows in my breast confin'd ; And if you've feeling, pity my distress For these too copious draughts of bitterness. But can it be that Abelard's forgot, As he's so coldly treated, and for what 1 He'll not believe you are so callous grown, Insensible to feeling as a stone : He thinks that time sufficiently has shown His love was grafted upon you alone ; On you his hopes were built, and every thought In fancy's mirror with your image fraught ; The loadstone of his heart,—Ins earthly sun, And counterpart ! but now a cloistered nun, Shut out the world, a pris'ner in cells Where brooding dark-eyed Melancholy dwells. What can assuage my sorrow, or console My broken heart, or frenzy of my soul ? Or stop the flowing ...