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
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!
BRIGHT star, would I were steadfast as thou art! Not in lone splendor 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, To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever - or else swoon to death.*
Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.
O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight! Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close, In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes, Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole ; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
FAME, like a wayward girl, will still be coy To those who woo her with too slavish knees, But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy, And dotes the more upon a heart at ease. She is a Gipsey,— will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her; A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close, Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gipsey is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye lovesick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn; Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that Make your best bow to her and bid adieu, Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.
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