SLEEPING VENUS. STILL, as she sleeps, betwixt her slender brows Her lips, like rosy lovers loth to part, Make scanty room between them for her breath; About their wavy outline wandereth A smile as sweet as when swift sunbeams dart This way and that upon a windless lake That ripples roundly ere it sinks to rest; And to that smile the smooth curves of her breast And flowing limbs delightful answer make. O'er all that placid world of hill and dale Night from her downcurved eyelids slowly draws The fragrant gloom of sleep, that overawes And folds the waking senses in a veil. White shines her forehead as when moonbeams rise Blue-veined against heaven's crystal vault profound; Her ebon hair, in slumbrous tresses bound, Forebodes the silence of the starry skies. A SUMMER DAY. LOVE from the mountains led his sheep, Once, on a summer day, Into a valley green and deep, Under rock-ramparts gray ; Sat on a stone where the waters run Rippling the hours away, Touched his lute in the light of the sun,— That was a summer day; Prayed in his heart for love which is fair, Prayed as the lonely pray; Love which is fire when life is air Laden with fragrant May; And as the leaflets lisped, and their shade Shifted like emerald spray, Paused and peered evermore as he prayed Love might pass that way. Then from the meads below the vale, Love, with a high sweet song, Came through the thickets, where roses trail Elder-bushes among ; Reeled as she went a homely thread Spun from a distaff-prong, Singing until her heart was wed Unto her own clear song; Sang to the light and the sun-lit glen, And as she wound by the hedgerows, where Listened and looked evermore, lest there |