The Time I’ve Lost In Wooing by Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

THE TIME I’VE LOST IN WOOING.

The time I’ve lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light, that lies
In woman’s eyes,
Has been my heart’s undoing.
Tho’ Wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorned the lore she brought me,
My only books
Were woman’s looks,
And folly’s all they’ve taught me.

Her smile when Beauty granted,
I hung with gaze enchanted,
Like him the Sprite,[1]
Whom maids by night
Oft meet in glen that’s haunted.
Like him, too, Beauty won me,
But while her eyes were on me,
If once their ray
Was turned away,
O! winds could not outrun me.

And are those follies going?
And is my proud heart growing
Too cold or wise
For brilliant eyes
Again to set it glowing?
No, vain, alas! the endeavor
From bonds so sweet to sever;
Poor Wisdom’s chance
Against a glance
Is now as weak as ever.

[1] This alludes to a kind of Irish fairy, which is to be met with, they
say, in the fields at dusk. As long as you keep your eyes upon him, he is
fixed, and in your power;–but the moment you look away (and he is
ingenious in furnishing some inducement) he vanishes. I had thought that
this was the sprite which we call the Leprechaun; but a high authority
upon such subjects, Lady Morgan, (in a note upon her national and
interesting novel, O’Donnel), has given a very different account of that
goblin.