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so thou wilt shine

       On me, and on this damsel fair of mine,

       And bless our simple lives. My Indian bliss!

       My river-lily bud! one human kiss!

       One sigh of real breath–one gentle squeeze,

       Warm as a dove’s nest among summer trees, And warm with dew at ooze from living blood!

       Whither didst melt? Ah, what of that!–all good

       We’ll talk about–no more of dreaming.–Now,

       Where shall our dwelling be? Under the brow

       Of some steep mossy hill, where ivy dun

       Would hide us up, although spring leaves were none;

       And where dark yew trees, as we rustle through,

       Will drop their scarlet berry cups of dew?

       O thou wouldst joy to live in such a place;

       Dusk for our loves, yet light enough to grace Those gentle limbs on mossy bed reclin’d:

       For by one step the blue sky shouldst thou find,

       And by another, in deep dell below,

       See, through the trees, a little river go

       All in its mid-day gold and glimmering.

       Honey from out the gnarled hive I’ll bring,

       And apples, wan with sweetness, gather thee,–

       Cresses that grow where no man may them see,

       And sorrel untorn by the dew-claw’d stag:

       Pipes will I fashion of the syrinx flag, That thou mayst always know whither I roam,

       When it shall please thee in our quiet home

       To listen and think of love. Still let me speak;

       Still let me dive into the joy I seek,–

       For yet the past doth prison me. The rill,

       Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill

       With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn,

       And thou shall feed them from the squirrel’s barn.

       Its bottom will I strew with amber shells,

       And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells. Its sides I’ll plant with dew-sweet eglantine,

       And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine.

       I will entice this crystal rill to trace

       Love’s silver name upon the meadow’s face.

       I’ll kneel to Vesta, for a flame of fire;

       And to god Phœbus, for a golden lyre;

       To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear;

       To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear,

       That I may see thy beauty through the night;

       To Flora, and a nightingale shall light Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods,

       And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods

       Of gold, and lines of Naiads’ long bright tress.

       Heaven shield thee for thine utter loveliness!

       Thy mossy footstool shall the altar be

       ‘Fore which I’ll bend, bending, dear love, to thee:

       Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak

       Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek,

       Trembling or stedfastness to this same voice,

       And of three sweetest pleasurings the choice: And that affectionate light, those diamond things,

       Those eyes, those passions, those supreme pearl springs,

       Shall be my grief, or twinkle me to pleasure.

       Say, is not bliss within our perfect seisure?

      O that I could not doubt?”

      The mountaineer

      Thus strove by fancies vain and crude to clear

       His briar’d path to some tranquillity.

       It gave bright gladness to his lady’s eye,

       And yet the tears she wept were tears of sorrow; Answering thus, just as the golden morrow

       Beam’d upward from the vallies of the east:

       “O that the flutter of this heart had ceas’d,

       Or the sweet name of love had pass’d away.

       Young feathor’d tyrant! by a swift decay

       Wilt thou devote this body to the earth:

       And I do think that at my very birth

       I lisp’d thy blooming titles inwardly;

       For at the first, first dawn and thought of thee,

       With uplift hands I blest the stars of heaven. Art thou not cruel? Ever have I striven

       To think thee kind, but ah, it will not do!

       When yet a child, I heard that kisses drew

       Favour from thee, and so I gave and gave

       To the void air, bidding them find out love:

       But when I came to feel how far above

       All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood,

       All earthly pleasure, all imagin’d good,

       Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss,–

       Even then, that moment, at the thought of this, Fainting I fell into a bed of flowers,

       And languish’d there three days. Ye milder powers,

       Am I not cruelly wrong’d? Believe, believe

       Me, dear Endymion, were I to weave

       With my own fancies garlands of sweet life,

       Thou shouldst be one of all. Ah, bitter strife!

       I may not be thy love: I am forbidden–

       Indeed I am–thwarted, affrighted, chidden,

       By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.

       Twice hast thou ask’d whither I went: henceforth Ask me no more! I may not utter it,

       Nor may I be thy love. We might commit

       Ourselves at once to vengeance; we might die;

       We might embrace and die: voluptuous thought!

       Enlarge not to my hunger, or I’m caught

       In trammels of perverse deliciousness.

       No, no, that shall not be: thee will I bless,

      And bid a long adieu.”

      The Carian

      No word return’d: both lovelorn, silent, wan, Into the vallies green together went.

       Far wandering, they were perforce content

       To sit beneath a fair lone beechen tree;

       Nor at each other gaz’d, but heavily

       Por’d on its hazle cirque of shedded leaves.

      Endymion! unhappy! it nigh grieves

       Me to behold thee thus in last extreme:

       Ensky’d ere this, but truly that I deem

       Truth the best music in a first-born song.

       Thy lute-voic’d brother will I sing ere long, And thou shall aid–hast thou not aided me?

       Yes, moonlight Emperor! felicity

       Has been thy meed for many thousand years;

       Yet often have I, on the brink of tears,

       Mourn’d as if yet thou wert a forester;–

      Forgetting

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