Alas! how slight a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love--
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fell off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When the ocean was all tranquility!
A something light as air--a look--
A word unkind or wrongly taken;
Oh, love that tempests never shook,
A breath--a touch like this hath shaken.
--_Thomas Moore._
867
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by
their understandings; indeed nine times in ten it is so.
868