Classic Poem

Here, woe-mark'd spot! once, dear Belinda lay;
Here, her cold bosom mix'd with colder clay:
And, here, despairing, and afflicted, I
Planted this tree, which now makes haste to die.
While this lov'd cypress a sad shelter made,
Oft wou'd I lose myself, beneath its shade:
Guide, with a painful pleasure, each dear shoot,
And water , with my tears , the rich-fed root.
Sigh, through the boughs, like some moist April breeze,
And the grasp'd trunk, in am'rous rapture, squeeze.
And when some warbling songster, nested there,
Belinda 's voice, methought, shook soft the air!
The murm'ring branches, bending, from the wind,
Breath'd a cool comfort o'er my love-shook mind.
Thus, sev'n long years, I learnt to hear, and see,
My lost Belinda , in her funeral tree!
But mad, at last, and all impatient grown,
To make my fruitless passion still more known:
Fatally fond, I cut a cruel mark,
And carv'd my name , upon the shrinking bark .
Wretch that I was! the tree, from that curs'd day,
In sad resentment, pin'd itself away!
And that new life, which dead Belinda gave,
Wither'd, with pain, crept, downward, to her grave.