Classic Poem

Youth sees the world before him, and the path
Of sin how fair, hedged in by every sweet
That flowers can breathe, or melting fruits distil;
For ever winding in its blossomed maze,
It meets the eye with pleasures ever new;
It leads to luscious gardens, snowy beds
Of lilies, heaps of roses, citron shades,
That breathe alluring fragrance, cool retreats
Beneath o'erarching vines, and lonely grots,
Where nectared fountains bubble, amber streams
Of kindling waters murmur, on whose banks
Couches of matted grass and scented bloom
Invite to slumber; music flows around,
The flute soft-warbling, and the violin,
That calls the dance, and wakes the revelry
Of jolly hearts, who float like bubbles down
The wave of being; myrtle thickets hide
The haunts of lawless love, where whispered sighs
And tittering voices through the night are heard,
And every deed of dallying wantonness
Conceived and done; fair women, like the forms
Who spread their arms to meet the warm embrace
Of saints, who dwell beneath the golden groves
Of Paradise, as Eastern fables tell,
Call to illusive pleasures. How the form
Mantled in gauzy drapery, which shows
Each fair-turned limb and rounded muscle, steeps
The soul in dreams voluptuous! how the face,
Whereon a thousand seeming graces sit,
Where the eye shines in ebon brightness, dark,
Insufferably dark, and with its lure
In fascination chains the gazer, till
She come and clasp her prey, or, dyed in blue
Of liquid softness, rolls its languid look,
And often throwing round the artful leer,
Turns from the meeting eye and sinks abashed!
The cheek for ever dimpling with the play
Of life's red current, now the crimson stream
Departing leaves it just incarnardined,
And melting into milky softness, then
The blush calls all the living lustre forth,
And like a full-blown rose it kindling swells.
Such is her path of roses; but its end
Is sickness, sorrow, shame, despair, and death.