How I pity those whose childhood has been unhappy! to them one of the sweetest springs of feeling has been utterly denied, the most green and beautif… - Letitia Elizabeth Landon

And o'er them lowers destruction, high in air,
Upon those jutting crags, whose rugged sides,
Riven in fragments, and like ruins pil'd,
Seem as that giants of those ancient days
When earthborn creatures braved th' Olympic Gods,
Those of whom fable tells, had torn away
Rocks from their solid base, and with strong arm,
Parted the mountains: there the avalanche hangs,
Mighty, but tremulous; just a light breath
Will loosen it from off its airy throne;
Then down it hurls in wrath, like to the sound
Of thunder amid storms, or as the voice
Of rushing waters—death in its career.

On a bough,
The only one chained by the honeysuckle,
Sat two white Doves, upon each neck a tint
Like the rose-stain within the delicate shell
Of the sea-pearl, as Love breathed on their plumes.
And each was mirror'd in the other's eyes,
Floating and dark, a paradise of passion.

The world is as the sea, in whose salt waves,
Like streams, we lose the freshness of our youth.