Four Extracts From Poem by Martin Farquhar Tupper

They met once more in sweet sad fear
At the old oak-tree in the forest drear,
And, as enamour'd of bitterness, they
Wept the sad hour of parting away.
The bursting tear, the stifled sob,
The tortured bosom's first-felt throb,
The fervent vow, the broken gold,
Their hapless hopes too truly told;
For, alas! till now they never had known
How deep and how strong their loves had grown,
But just as they sip the full cup of the heart,
It is dashed from the lip,- and they must part:
Alas! they had loved, yet never before
The wealth of love had counted o'er,
And just as they find the treasure so great,
It is lost, it is sunk in the billows of fate!
Yea, it must be with a fearful shock
That the pine can be torn from its root-clasp'd rock,
Or the broad oak-stump, as it stands on the farm,
Be rent asunder by strength of arm;
So, when the cords of love are twined
Among the fibres of the mind,
And kindred souls by secret ties
Mingle thoughts and sympathies,
O, what a wrench to tear in twain
Those that are loved and love again,-
To drag the magnet from its pole,
To chain the freedom of the soul,
To freeze in ice desires that boil,
To root the mandrake from the soil,
With groans, and blood, and tears, and toil!