| If these brief lays, of Sorrow born, | |
| Were taken to be such as closed | |
| Grave doubts and answers here proposed, | |
| Then these were such as men might scorn: | |
| |
| Her care is not to part and prove; | 5 |
| She takes, when harsher moods remit, | |
| What slender shade of doubt may flit, | |
| And makes it vassal unto love: | |
| |
| And hence, indeed, she sports with words, | |
| But better serves a wholesome law, | 10 |
| And holds it sin and shame to draw | |
| The deepest measure from the chords: | |
| |
| Nor dare she trust a larger lay, | |
| But rather loosens from the lip | |
| Short swallow-flights of song, that dip | 15 |
| Their wings in tears, and skim away. | |