When the redbird spread his sable wing, EROS. THE sense of the world is short, - To love and be beloved; Men and gods have not outlearned it; HERMIONE. ON a mound an Arab lay, And sung his sweet regrets And told his amulets: The summer bird His sorrow heard, And, when he heaved a sigh profound, The sympathetic swallow swept the ground. 'If it be, as they said, she was not fair, But sceptred genius, aye inorbed, This Hermione absorbed The lustre of the land and ocean, 'I ask no bauble miniature, Shorn from her comely head, Steeped in her quality, And singers of her fame Who is their Muse and dame. 'Higher, dear swallows! mind not what I say. Ah! heedless how the weak are strong, Say, was it just, In thee to frame, in me to trust, Thou to the Syrian couldst belong? 'I am of a lineage That each for each doth fast engage; 'Once I dwelt apart, Now I live with all; As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side 'Now, deceived, thou wanderest And my kindred come to soothe me. Unveils thy form. Out of the forest way Forth paced it yesterday; And when I sat by the watercourse, Watching the daylight fade, It throbbed up from the brook. 'River and rose and crag and bird, Frost and sun and eldest night. To me their aid preferred, To me their comfort plight; "Courage! we are thine allies, And with this hint be wise, The chains of kind The distant bind; Deed thou doest she must do, And autumn's sunlit festivals, She shall find thee, and be found. THE INITIAL LOVE. VENUS, when her son was lost, Time and tide are strangely changed, Shod like a traveller for haste; With malice dared me to proclaim him, Boy no more, he wears all coats, Leave his weeds and heed his eyes, All the rest he can disguise. In the pit of his eye's a spark Would bring back day if it were dark; In those unfathomable orbs Doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot, Undaunted are their courages, They are his steeds, and not his feature; Inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting, Restless, predatory, hasting; And they pounce on other eyes And round their circles is writ, Underneath, within, above, Love-love - love— love. He lives in his eyes; There doth digest, and work, and spin, |