—true love is like religion, it hath its silence and its sanctity. - Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Methinks we must have known some former state
More glorious than our present, and the heart
Is haunted with dim memories, shadows left
By past magnificence; and hence we pine
With vain aspirings, hopes that fill the eyes
With bitter tears for their own vanity.

The lark is with triumphant song
Singing the rose-touched clouds among:
'Tis there that lighted song has birth,
What hath such hymn to do with earth?

The hope that clings to the least glimpse of blue
Amid a sky of murkiness ; the fear
That sickens at itself; the fond deceit,
That will not see the truth ; the tenderness,
That only asks to trust ; and, at the last,
The knowledge we have known in vain so long
Comes like a thunderbolt, and crashes.