Canto XLVII
If these brief lays, of Sorrow born,Were taken to be such as closedGrave doubts and answers here proposed,Then these were such as men might scorn:
Her care is not to part and prove;She takes, when harsher moods remit,What slender shade of doubt may flit,And makes it vassal unto love:
And hence, indeed, she sports with words;But better serves a wholesome law,And holds it sin and shame to drawThe deepest measure from the chords:
Nor dare she trust a larger lay,But rather loosens from the lipShort swallow-flights of song, that dipTheir wings in tears, and skim away.