XVIII. THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave 1819. XIX. I CRY your mercy-pity-love!-aye, ove! One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love, Withhold no atom's atom or I die, Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall, BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou artNot 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 moorsNo-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, Another reading : Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death. FEB 2 4 19:5 |