XV. T HE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, When the dusk holiday-or holinight Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave 1819. I XVI. CRY your mercy-pity-love!-aye, love! Merciful love that tantalises not, One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Unmask'd, and being seen-without a blot! O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Of love, your kiss,- those hands, those eyes divine, That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, Yourself your soul-in pity give me all, B XVII. HIS LAST SONNET.' RIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, This was written in a copy of Shakespeare's Poems given to Mr. Severn a few days before. Another reading: "Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death." P SONNET OF DOUBTFUL AUTHENTICITY. LEASURES lie thickest where no pleas ures seem. There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground And hath its Eves and Edens-so I deem. 1 I believe this to be one of George Byron's forgeries. |