Or a garden bowered close With plaited alleys of the trailing rose, Of crowned lilies, standing near Whether in after life retired From brawling storms, From weary wind, With youthful fancy reinspired, And those whom passion had not blinded, SONG. I. A SPIRIT haunts the year's last hours, For at eventide, listening earnestly, Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers: Heavily hangs the broad sunflower Over its grave i' the earth so chilly⚫ Heavily hangs the hollyhock, Heavily hangs the tiger-lily. II. The air is damp, and hushed, and close, My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves Of the fading edges of box beneath, And the year's last rose. Heavily hangs the broad sunflower ADELINE. MYSTERY of mysteries, But beyond expression fair, Thy rose-lips and full blue eyes Take the heart from out my breast. Whence that aery bloom of thine, Ere the placid lips be cold? What hope or fear or joy is thine? Hast thou heard the butterflies With what voice the violet woos Hast thou looked upon the breath Some honey-converse feeds thy mind, His curtains, wasting odorous sighs All night long on darkness blind. Lovest thou the doleful wind When thou gazest at the skies? Doth the low-tongued Orient On thy pillow, lowly bent With melodious airs lovelorn, Breathing light against thy face, A CHARACTER. I. WITH a half-glance upon the sky II. He spake of beauty: that the dull Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; Then looking as 'twere in a glass, He smoothed his chin and sleeked his hair, And said the earth was beautiful. III. He spake of virtue: not the gods More purely, when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by: And with a sweeping of the arm, And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods. IV. Most delicately hour by hour V. With lips depressed as he were meek, Upon himself himself did feed: Quiet, dispassionate, and cold, And other than his form of creed, With chiselled features clear and sleek. THE POET THE poet in a golden clime was born, Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, He saw through life and death, through good and ill, He saw through his own soul. The marvel of the everlasting will, An open scroll, Before him lay: with echoing feet he threaded The viewless arrows of his thoughts were headed Like Indian reeds blown from his silver tongue, From Calpe unto Caucasus they sung, Filling with light |