Against Suspicion

Oh, fly! 'tis dire Suspicion's mien;And, meditating plagues unseen,The sorceress hither bends:Behold her touch in gall imbrued:Behold--her garment drops with bloodOf lovers and of friends.

Fly far! Already in your eyesI see a pale suffusion rise;And soon through every vein,Soon will her secret venom spread,And all your heart and all your headImbibe the potent stain.

Then many a demon will she raiseTo vex your sleep, to haunt your ways;While gleams of lost delightRaise the dark tempest of the brain,As lightning shines across the mainThrough whirlwinds and through night.

No more can faith or candour move;But each ingenuous deed of love,Which reason would applaud,Now, smiling o'er her dark distress,Fancy malignant strives to dressLike injury and fraud.

Farewell to virtue's peaceful times:Soon will you stoop to act the crimesWhich thus you stoop to fear:Guilt follows guilt; and where the trainBegins with wrongs of such attain,What horrors form the rear!

'Tis thus to work her baleful power,Suspicion waits the sullen hourOf fretfulness and strife,When care the infirmer bosom wrings,Or Eurus waves his murky wingsTo damp the seats of life.

But come, forsake the scene unbless'd,Which first beheld your faithful breastTo groundless fears a prey:Come where, with my prevailing lyre,The skies, the streams, the groves conspireTo charm your doubts away.

Throned in the sun's descending car,What power unseen diffuseth farThis tenderness of mind?What Genius smiles on yonder flood?What God, in whispers from the wood,Bids every thought be kind?

O Thou, whate'er thy awful name,Whose wisdom our untoward frameWith social love restrains;Thou, who by fair affection's tiesGiv'st us to double all our joys,And half disarm our pains;

If far from Dyson and from meSuspicion took, by thy decree,Her everlasting flight;If firm on virtue's ample baseThy parent hand has deign'd to raiseOur friendship's honour'd height;

Let universal candour still,Clear as yon heaven-reflecting rill,Preserve my open mind;Nor this nor that man's crooked waysOne sordid doubt within me raiseTo injure human kind.