Let thy love in kisses rain TO SOPHIA. I. THOU art fair, and few are fairer, Of the nymphs of earth or ocean. They are robes that fit the wearer Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion Ever falls and shifts and glances, As the life within them dances. II. Thy deep eyes, a double planet, Gaze the wisest into madness With soft clear fire. The winds that fan it Are those thoughts of gentle gladness Which, like zephyrs on the billow, Make thy gentle soul their pillow. III. If whatever face thou paintest In those eyes grows pale with pleasure, If the fainting soul is faintest When it hears thy harp's wild measure, Wonder not that, when thou speakest, Of the weak my heart is weakest. IV. As dew beneath the wind of morning, ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY. I. Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, II. Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone; Are graven, till the characters be grown 'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown III. And from its head as from one body grow, As Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow And their long tangles in each other lock, And with unending involutions shew Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock The torture and the death within, and saw The solid air with many a ragged jaw. IV. And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise And he comes hastening like a moth that hies After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a light more dread than obscurity. V. 'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror; For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare Kindled by that inextricable error, Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air Become a and ever-shifting mirror Of all the beauty and the terror there— A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. (With what truth I may say — I. My lost William, thou in whom Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine II. Where art thou, my gentle child ? With its life intense and mild, The love of living leaves and weeds, Among these tombs and ruins wild; Let me think that through low seeds Of the sweet flowers and sunny grass, Into their hues and scents may pass A portion |