O ye, who furnish’d with hearts form’d of fire,
Can clasp no longer love within your arms;
Who, lost in a poor world of brick and mire,
Can find no breast to give the love which charms;
Who live to dream, what waking quite confounds;
Who, forced on self, loathe your own lives the while;
Who cannot hear your names, ’mid many sounds,
Or teach one heart to feel, one face to smile;
Mechanical action, which use steers, not thought,
And lifeless purpose, robb’d of seeming gains,
This is your lot: with how much rapture fraught,
Too well, I know, were Nature’s slightest strains;
With what sweet voice Nature can soothe such woe,
And smile away such tears with evening’s glow.