Sonnet LXIX To a Young Lady, Purposing to Marry a Man of Immoral Character in the Hope of His Reformation
Time, and thy charms, thou fanciest will redeem
Yon aweless Libertine from rooted vice.
Misleading thought! has he not paid the price,
His taste for virtue?—Ah, the sensual stream
Has flow’d too long.—What charms can so entice,
What frequent guilt so pall, as not to shame
The rash belief, presumptuous and unwise,
That crimes habitual will forsake the Frame?—
1Thus, on the river’s bank, in fabled lore,
The Rustic stands; sees the stream swiftly go,
And thinks he soon shall find the gulph below
A channel dry, which he may safe pass o’er.—
Vain hope!—it flows—and flows—and yet will flow,
Volume decreaseless, to the FINAL HOUR.
1:
“Rusticus exspectat dum defluit amnis: at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.” Horace.