The Human Heart

The human heart is bold and strong,
Yet oft betrayed or guided wrong,
With little flattering, soft carresses,
Or gilded words that love expresses;
With fascinating smiles and kisses,
And present dreams and promised blisses.

The human heart is strong and bold,
Yet often wounded, oft controll'd;
Listening to fancy's strange transportings,
And falsehood's wiles, and woman's courtings;
A thousand treacherous darts go through it,
And then it bleeds, and then—we rue it.

The human heart is strong and bold,
A granite castle's mural hold,
Where fetters rattle—ah! those fetters
Have chained me, and they chain my betters.
Sweet rose! why should thy thorns surround me,
Thus to perplex, and thus to wound me?

The human heart is strong and bold,
But thine, a woman's, proud and cold;
Its iciness a fire has lighted,
Its pride, my buds of hope has blighted.
Strange that such power to thee was given
To make, by love, a hell of heaven.

Heart! then be cautious, nor attend
To whispering wiles, nor slippery friend;
The honied speech hath verjuice in it,
And ecstacy's swift-pinion'd minute
Brings years of pain: if love betray thee,
Nought can its miseries repay thee.