ho stole my dog that loved no one but me?
Why was the tent unstruck, I unawaked,
I left, most loved, and last to be forgotten
By much obtaining, much indebted Theseus?
Left to sleep on, to dream and slumber on;
Nothing to know, save fancies of the air,
While he, so strangly covert in his thoughts,
Was softly stirring to be gone from me.
Ah me, my Theseus, whither art thou gone!
Hast thou, in pleasant sport, deserted me?
Is it a whim, a jest, a trick of task,
To mesh me in another labyrinth?
Could Theseus so make mirth of Ariadne?
Unless he did, I would not think he could.
And yet I will believe he is in jest.
More false than that, he could not be to me,
Since false to me, to his own self were false.
Now do I hold in hope what I have heard,
That love will sometimes cunning masks put on,
Speak with strange tongues, and wear odd liveries,
Transform himself to seemings most unlike,
And still be love in fearful opposites.
So may it be, but my immediate fear
Jostles that hope aside, and I remember
Of what my tutor AEtion did forewarn me.
Oh fond old man! if thou didst know me here,
Thou wouldst move heaven and earth to have me home.
Much was his care of my uncaring youth,
And, with a reverend and considerate wit,
He curbed the frolic of my pupilage,
Less by the bridle, than the feeding it
With stories ending in moralities,
With applications and similitudes
Tacked to the merest leaf I looked upon,
Till, so it was, we two did love each other,
The sage and child, with mutual amity.
Oft, hand in hand, we passed my father's gate,
At evening, when the horizontal day
Chequered his farewell on the western wall;
Shying the court, where, for the frolic lords,
Under the profaned silence of the rose,
The syrinx, and the stringed sonorous shell,
Governed the twinkling heeled Terpischore.
We softly went and turned towards the bay,
And found another world, contemplative
Of shells and pebbles by the ocean shore.
I do remember, once, on such an eve,
Pacing the polished margin of the deep,
We found two weeds that had embraced each other,
And talked of friendship, love and sympathy.
_My pupil sweet,_ said he, _beware of Love:
For thou wilt shortly be besieged by him,
From the four winds of heaven, because thou art
Daught