Bringeth me no replying, Of word, or thought, or sigh. In all my joying and grieving, O soul of my soul's seeing, I call on you this once more. Are you too high or too lowly To come at length unto me? Are you too sweet or too holy For me to have and to see? Wherever you are, I call you, Have you not seen, in sleeping, And thought of him through the day? Ah! thought of him long and dearly, Till you seemed to behold him clearly, -- And could follow the dull time merely Have you not known him kneeling To a deathless vision of you, Whom only an earth was concealing, Whom all that was heaven proved true? And smiled, and wondered, and knew. And what are you thinking and saying, Have you a prison to break? And hath it not reached you, my praying We two, made one, should have power A tree for men to sit under Beside life's flowerless stream: In my most beautiful dream. TO A YOUNG MURDERESS.18 FAIR, yellow murderess, whose gilded head Gleaming with deaths; whose deadly body white, Writ o'er with secret records of the dead; Whose tranquil eyes, that hide the dead from sight Down in their tenderest depth and bluest bloom; Whose strange unnatural grace; whose prolonged youth— Are for my death now and the shameful doom Of all the man I might have been in truth Your fell smile, sweetened still, lest I might shun Most vengeful in his last revenge and sure And suffer the whole death before he dies. Will you not slay me? Stab me; yea, somehow Oh, would I might but see you turn and cast Through all eternity! Nay; kiss me, Sweet! ROBERT BULWER, EARL OF LYTTON. MADAME LA MARQUISE. THE folds of her wine-dark violet dress As she sits in the air of her loveliness, Half of her exquisite face in the shade Which o'er it the screen in her soft hand flings: Through the gloom glows her hair in its odorous braid : In the firelight are sparkling her rings. As she leans, the slow smile half shut up in her eyes Beams the sleepy, long, silk-soft lashes beneath; Through her crimson lips, stirred by her faint replies, Breaks one gleam of her pearl-white teeth. As she leans, where your eye, by her beauty subdued, Droops from under warm fringes of broidery white The slightest of feet-silken-slippered, protrude, For one moment, then slip out of sight. As I bend o'er her bosom, to tell her the news, The faint scent of her hair, the approach of her cheek, The vague warmth of her breath, all my senses suffuse With HERSELF: and I tremble to speak. So she sits in the curtained, luxurious light Of that room, with its porcelain, and pictures, and flowers, When the dark day 's half done, and the snow flutters white, Past the windows in feathery showers. All without is so cold, — 'neath the low leaden sky! Down the bald, empty street, like a ghost, the gendarme Stalks surly: a distant carriage hums by: All within is so bright and so warm! Here we talk of the schemes and the scandals of court, Her warm hand, at parting, so strangely thrilled mine, But she drives after noon; then 's the time to behold her, With her fair face, half hid, like a ripe peeping rose, 'Neath that veil, o'er the velvets and furs which enfold To loll back in a carriage, all day, with a smile, And at dusk, on a sofa, to lean in the shade Of soft lamps, and be wooed for a while. Could we find out her heart through that velvet and lace! With live women and men to be found in the world— (— Live with sorrow and sin,—live with pain and with passion, — ) Who could live with a doll, though its locks should be curled, And its petticoats trimmed in the fashion? |