LOVE, THE AWAKENER. Love, through the stars, swoop'd down the violet sky; His flaming feet caught at a fountain-brim ; And crouching there, sweet taper limb to limb, He stood his rebeck on his moonlit thigh, : Toss'd back his pinions, wreath'd in pansied rim, Shaking off silver, and stroked out thereby His twinkling strings to swooning harmony; And tinseling sprays the fountain spill'd on him. Anear, through a low window left unclose, And sleep for ever banish'd from his bed. BAGATELLES. THE wanton bee that suck'd the rose The love that in my bosom glows And when the rose began to die, FOR Kitty has a golden head And Solomon's in the strange old story, And Bethlehem's in the new, And Kitty in her golden glory Is my religion too. I'd like to be the lavender That makes her linen sweet, And swoon and sweeten in her breast, And faint around her feet. She'd hardly think of me at all, And yet I'd be the lavender, And make her linen sweet. To you who have no thought of God, And you who never saw her face, For like as lightning strikes one dead To clangs of God's cithole, Her face so rose-bud rare and red Strikes life into my soul ! CHELSEA. AND life is like a pipe, And love is the fusee; The pipe draws well, but bar the light, So light it up, and puff away An empty morning through, And when it's out-why love is out, And life's, as well out too! THE lords of state, and the thieving sparrows, The girls with flowers and shrill calabrians I cannot write, or read, or practise; TRAGEDIES. SHE was a dancer,-I was her master; (She has soft brown eyes and soft brown hair)— 'Twas down at the back of the booth, my sweeting, You never knew I was there! My brain was fire. At fall of night, By a great black cedar, dagger'd dead, And the white stars shrinking, high overhead. In a laughing wanton's bed! |