Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader · Chapter 266=344.= Marriage
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The bard has sung, God never formed a soul Without its own peculiar mate, to meet Its wandering half, when ripe to crown the whole Bright plan of bliss, most heavenly, most complete!
But thousand evil things there are that hate To look on happiness: these hurt, impede, And, leagued with time, space, circumstance, and fate, Keep kindred heart from heart, to pine, and pant, and bleed.
And as the dove to far Palmyra flying, From where her native founts of Antioch beam, Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream;
So, many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, Suffers, recoils, then thirsty and despairing Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught.
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=Joseph Rodman Drake, 1795-1820.= (Manual, p. 517.)
From "The Culprit Fay."