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When love's bark, with its anchor gone, Clings to a straw, and still trusts on. Oh, more than all!—methinks that Love Should pray that it might ever be   Beside the burning shrine which had Its young heart's fond idolatry. Oh, absence is the night of love! Lovers are very children then; Fancying ten thousand feverish shapes, Until their light returns again. A look, a word, is then recalled, And thought upon until it wears, What is, perhaps, a very shade, The tone and aspect of our fears. And this was what was withering now The radiance of 's brow.