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Thomas Moore - Alas! How Light A Cause May Move
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     FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM."


Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain has tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!

A something light as air,--a look,
  A word unkind or wrongly taken,--
O, love that tempests never shook,
  A breath, a touch like this has shaken!
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship`s smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds,--or like the stream,
That smiling left the mountain`s brow,
  As though its waters ne`er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
  Breaks into floods that part forever.

O you, that have the charge of Love,
  Keep him in rosy bondage bound,
As in the Fields of Bliss above
  He sits, with flowerets fettered round;--
Loose not a tie that round him clings,
Nor ever let him use his wings;
For even an hour, a minute`s flight
Will rob the plumes of half their light.
Like that celestial bird,--whose nest
  Is found beneath far Eastern skies,--
  Whose wings, though radiant when at rest,
Lose all their glory when he flies!
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