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XVIII.

THE 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,

Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,
Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,
Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise-
Vanished unseasonably at shut of eve,
When the dusk holiday—or holinight

Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave
The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight;
But, as I've read love's missal through to-day,
He'll let me sleep, seeing I fast and pray.

1819.

XIX.

I CRY your mercy-pity-love!-aye, ove!
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,

Withhold no atom's atom or I die,

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

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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,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.*

Another reading :

Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.

FEB 2 4 19:5

LONDON:

SWIFT AND CO., REGENT PRESS, KING STREET,

REGENT STREET, W.

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