He shouted and ran, as he leapt from the stile;
And what in my bosom was passing the while?
For love knows the blessing
Of ardent caressing,
When virtue inspires us, and doubts are all gone.
The sunshine of Fortune you say is divine;
True love and the sunshine of Nature were mine,
When I put on my new gown and waited for John.
Never could spot be suited less
To bear memorials of distress;
None, cries the sage, more fit is found,
They strike at once a double wound;
Humiliation bids you sigh,
And think of immortality.
Close on the bank, and half o'ergrown,
Beneath a dark wood's soinbrous frown,
A monumental stone appears,
Of one who in his blooming years,
While bathing spurn'd the grassy shore,
And sunk, midst friends, to rise no more;
By parents witness'd--Hark! their shrieks!
The dreadful language horror speaks!
But why in verse attempt to tell
That tale the stone records so well[A]?
[Footnote A: _Inscription on the side towards the water._
"Sacred to the memory of JOHN WHITEHEAD WARRE, who perished near this
spot, whilst bathing in the river Wye, in sight of his afflicted parents,
brother, and sister, on the 11th of September, 1804, in the sixteenth year
of his age.
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