To a Married Friend (1)

First love is self-love: a thin shade that starts
From-out ourselves, its dreamy joys the brood
Of base will-worship, that in restless hearts
Doth crave to have the loss of youth made good.
First love too oft is love without esteem
Or mutual honor, seeking in a wife
No help, no shelter, but a soothing beam
To minister a sunshine to our life: —
The growth of one wild hour! and thereof come
Dull-hearted unions and a listless home.
I have known men to whom it hath been given
To make one shipwreck on love's rocky coast,
And they have lived to teach, as though from heaven,
That he is blest whose first-love hath been crossed.