The Tear
by George Gordon, Lord Byron
(composed: 26 October 1806)
(In Fugitive Pieces - 1806)
(In Hours of Idleness - 1807)
1
- When Friendship or Love
- Our sympathies move;
- When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
- The lips may beguile,
- With a dimple or smile,
- But the test of affections a Tear.
2
- Too oft is a smile
- But the hypocrites wile,
- To mask detestation, or fear;
- Give me the soft sigh,
- Whilst the soultelling eye
- Is dimmd, for a time, with a Tear.
3
- Mild Charitys glow,
- To us mortals below,
- Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
- Compassion will melt,
- Where this virtue is felt,
- And its dew is diffused in a Tear.
4
- The man, doomd to sail
- With the blast of the gale,
- Through billows Atlantic to steer,
- As he bends oer the wave
- Which may soon be his grave,
- The green sparkles bright with a Tear.
5
- The Soldier braves death
- For a fanciful wreath
- In Glorys romantic career;
- But he raises the foe
- When in battle laid low,
- And bathes every wound with a Tear.
6
- If, with high-bounding pride,
- He return to his bride!
- Renouncing the gore-crimsond spear;
- All his toils are repaid
- When, embracing the maid,
- From her eyelid he kisses the Tear.
7
- Sweet scene of my youth!
- Seat of Friendship and Truth,
- Where Love chasd each fast-fleeting year
- Loth to leave thee, I mournd,
- For a last look I turnd,
- But thy spire was scarce seen through a Tear.
8
- Though my vows I can pour,
- To my Mary no more,
- My Mary, to Love once so dear,
- In the shade of her bowr,
- I remember the hour,
- She rewarded those vows with a Tear.
9
- By another possest,
- May she live ever blest!
- Her name still my heart must revere:
- With a sigh I resign,
- What I once thought was mine,
- And forgive her deceit with a Tear.
10
- Ye friends of my heart,
- Ere from you I depart,
- This hope to my breast is most near:
- If again we shall meet,
- In this rural retreat,
- May we meet, as we part, with a Tear.
11
- When my soul wings her flight
- To the regions of night,
- And my corse shall recline on its bier;
- As ye pass by the tomb,
- Where my ashes consume,
- Oh! moisten their dust with a Tear.
12
- May no marble bestow
- The splendour of woe
- Which the children of vanity rear;
- No fiction of fame
- Shall blazon my name.
- All I askall I wishis a Tear.
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