Nature had rased their love, which could not be And so they grew together like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, Which the same hand will gather, the same clime Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow He faints, dissolved into a sea of love. "Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew, A table near of polished porphyry. They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye That looked on them; a fragrance from the touch Whose warmth... checked their life; a light such As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove The childish pity that she felt for them. remorse that from their stem And a. She had divided such fair shapes. . made All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay: rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms, And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes The livery of unremembered snow— Violets whose eyes have drunk— Fiordispina and her nurse are now 1820. Upon the steps of the high portico; She flings her glowing arm. step by step and stair by stair, That withered woman, grey and white and brown- Than anything which once could have been human. "How slow and painfully you seem to walk, Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk." "And well it may, Fiordispina, dearest! Well-a-day! You are hastening to a marriage-bed; I to the grave!"—" And, if my love were dead, As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought." Such fancies are music out of tune With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night. Back to the paradise from which you sprung, And leave to grosser mortals ? And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet And subtle mystery by which spirits meet? Who knows whether the loving game is played When, once of mortal vesture disarrayed, The naked soul goes wandering here and there LXIII. TO THE MOON. ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,— Among the stars that have a different birth,- And ever changing, like a joyless eye That gazes on thee till in thee it pities . . 1820. 1820. 1820. LXIV. UNRISEN splendour of the brightest sun, To rise upon our darkness, if the star Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war With thy young brightness! LXV. AN ALLEGORY. A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant Stands yawning on the highway of the life Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt And many pass it by with careless tread, And they learn little there, except to know LXVI. I WENT into the deserts of dim sleep That world which, like an unknown wilderness, LXVII. THE viewless and invisible Consequence 1821. And.. hovers o'er thy guilty sleep, Unveiling every new-born deed, and thoughts LXVIII. I DREAMED that Milton's spirit rose, and took From life's green tree his Uranian lute; And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked, LXIX. His face was like a snake's-wrinkled and loose LXX. THE gentleness of rain was in the wind. LXXI. METHOUGHT I was a billow in the crowd Of common men, that stream without a shore, Where mighty shapes-pyramid, dome, and tower- LXXII. LOVE, HOPE, DESIRE, AND FEAR. AND many there were hurt by that strong boy; And near him stood, glorious beyond measure, In earth and air and sea: Nothing that lives from their award is free. Their names will I declare to thee,- Love, Hope, Desire and Fear; Of the four elements that frame the heart,- Desire presented her [false] glass; and then Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair And, dazed by that bright error, It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger, And death and penitence and danger, Had not then silent Fear Touched with her palsying spear,— So that, as if a frozen torrent, The blood was curdled in its current; A wretched thing, poor heart! Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought, Then Hope approached, she who can borrow, When, as summer lures the swallow, (O weak heart of little wit!) |