Frame: The Italian Minstrel

'T WAS sad to gaze on the wan brow
Of him who now awoke the lute,
As one last song life must allow.

Then would those tuneful lips be mute.
His cheek was worn, what was the care
Had writ such early lesson there?
Was it Love, blighted in its hour
Of earliest and truest power
By worldly chills which ever fling
Their check and damp on young Love's wing;
Or unrequited, while the heart
Could not from its fond worship part?
Or was it but the wasting woe
Which every human path must know;
Or hopes, like birds, sent forth in vain,
And seeking not their ark again;
Friends in their very love unjust,
Or faithless to our utmost trust;
Or fortune's gifts, to win so hard;
Or fame, that is its own reward
Or has no other, and is worn
Mid envy, falsehood, hate, and scorn?

All these ills had that young bard known,
And they had laid his funeral stone.
Slowly and sad the numbers pass'd,
As thus the minstrel sung his last.