But Absent

From James Thomson's The Seasons  (Spring):

But absent, what fantastic woes, arrous'd,
Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life?
Neglected fortune flies; and sliding swift,
Prone into ruin, fall his scorn'd affairs. ⁠1005
'Tis nought but gloom around: the darken'd sun
Loses his light: the rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All Nature fades extinct; and she alone ⁠1010
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends;
And sad amid the social band he fits,
Lonely, and unattentive. From his tongue ⁠1015
Th' unfinish'd period falls: while borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy site, with head declin'd, ⁠1020
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades, and sympathetic glooms;
Where the dun umbrage o'er the falling stream,
Romantic, hangs; there thro' the pensive dusk ⁠1025
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
Indulging all to love: or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears,
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day, ⁠1030
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon
Peeps thro' the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlightened by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam, ⁠1035
With soften'd soul, and wooes the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his: or, while the world
And all the sons of Care lie hush'd in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours ⁠1040
His idly-tortur'd heart into the page,
Meant for the moving messenger of love;
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With riling frenzy fir'd. But if on bed

Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies.⁠1045
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds; till the grey morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love: and then perhaps
Exhausted Nature sinks a while to rest,⁠1050
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o'er the sick imagination rise,
And in black colours paint the mimic scene.
Oft with th' enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crouds distress'd; or if retir'd⁠1055
To secret-winding flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of Man,
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatch'd from her yielded hand, he knows not how,⁠1060
Thro' forests huge, and long untravel'd heaths
With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapt; or shrinks aghast,
Back, from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach⁠1065
The farther shore; where succourless, and sad,
She with extended arms his aid implores,
But strives in vain; borne by th' outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or whelm'd beneath the boiling eddy sinks.⁠

—oOo—