89

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.

THE INDIAN SERENADE

I

ARISE from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me who knows how!
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs, they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-
And the Champak odors fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;—
As I must die on thine,

O! beloved as thou art!

Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;-
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

John Keats

Percy Bysshe Shelley

90

ΟΝΕ

NE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained

For thee to disdain it.

One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,

The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

M

USIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

92

MAUD1

I

B

IRDS in the high Hall-garden
When twilight was falling,

Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud,

They were crying and calling.

Where was Maud? in our wood;
And I who else?. -was with her,
Gathering woodland lilies,

Myriads blow together.

Birds in our woods sang
Ringing thro' the valleys,

Maud is here, here, here
In among the lilies.

I kissed her slender hand,
She took the kiss sedately;

Maud is not seventeen,

But she is tall and stately.

I to cry out on pride

Who have won her favor!
O, Maud were sure of heaven
If lowliness could save her!

I know the way she went

Home with her maiden posy,

For her feet have touched the meadows

And left the daisies rosy.

1 Lyrics from Maud: A Monodrama.

Birds in the high Hall-garden
Were crying and calling to her,
Where is Maud, Maud, Maud?

One is come to woo her.

Look, a horse at the door,

And little King Charley snarling! Go back, my lord, across the moor, You are not her darling.

II

IVULET crossing my ground,

RIVULET

And bringing me down from the Hall

This garden-rose that I found,

Forgetful of Maud and me,

And lost in trouble and moving round
Here at the head of a tinkling fall,

And trying to pass to the sea;

O rivulet, born at the Hall,

My Maud has sent it by thee—

If I read her sweet will right

On a blushing mission to me,

Saying in odor and color, "Ah be Among the roses to-night."

III

OME into the garden, Maud,

COM

For the black bat, night, has flown,

Come into the garden, Maud,

I am here at the gate alone;

And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,

And the musk of the roses blown.

For a breeze of morning moves,

And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves, On a bed of daffodil sky,—

To faint in the light of the sun that she loves, To faint in its light, and to die.

All night have the roses heard

The flute, violin, bassoon;

All night has the casement jessamine stirred
To the dancers dancing in tune,—
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.

I said to the lily, "There is but one
With whom she has heart to be gay.
When will the dancers leave her alone?
She is weary of dance and play."
Now half to the setting moon are gone,
And half to the rising day;

Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.

I said to the rose, "The brief night goes
In babble and revel and wine.
O young lord-lover, what sighs are those
For one that will never be thine?

But mine, but mine," so I sware to the rose,
"For ever and ever mine!"

And the soul of the rose went into my blood,
As the music clashed in the hall;

And long by the garden lake I stood,
For I heard your rivulet fall