MARGARET.

I.

SWEET pale Margaret,

O rare pale Margaret,

What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight on a falling shower?
Who lent you, love, your mortal dower
Of pensive thought and aspect pale,
Your melancholy sweet and frail
As perfume of the cuckoo-flower?
From the westward-winding flood,
From the evening-lighted wood,

From all things outward you have won A tearful grace, as tho' you stood

Between the rainbow and the sun.
The very smile before you speak,
That dimples your transparent cheek,
Encircles all the heart, and feedeth
The senses with a still delight

Of dainty sorrow without sound,
Like the tender amber round,

Which the moon about her spreadeth,
Moving thro' a fleecy night.

II.

You love, remaining peacefully,

To hear the murmur of the strife,

But enter not the toil of life.

Your spirit is the calmed sea,

Laid by the tumult of the fight.

You are the evening star, alway

Remaining betwixt dark and bright:

Lull'd echoes of laborious day

Come to you, gleams of mellow light
Float by you on the verge of night.

III.

What can it matter, Margaret,

What songs below the waning stars
The lion-heart, Plantagenet,

Sang looking thro' his prison bars?
Exquisite Margaret, who can tell
The last wild thought of Chatelet,
Just ere the falling axe did part
The burning brain from the true heart,
Even in her sight he loved so well?

IV.

A fairy shield your Genius made
And gave you on your natal day.
Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away.
You move not in such solitudes,
You are not less divine,

But more human in your moods,

Than your twin-sister, Adeline.
Your hair is darker, and your eyes

Touch'd with a somewhat darker hue,
And less aërially blue,

But ever trembling thro' the dew
Of dainty-woeful sympathies.

V.

O sweet pale Margaret,

O rare pale Margaret,

Come down, come down, and hear me speak: Tie up the ringlets on your cheek:

The sun is just about to set,

The arching limes are tall and shady,
And faint, rainy lights are seen,
Moving in the leavy beech.

Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady,
Where all day long you sit between
Joy and woe, and whisper each.

Or only look across the lawn,

Look out below your bower-eaves,
Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn
Upon me thro' the jasmine-leaves.

ELEÄNORE.

I.

HY dark eyes open'd not,

Nor first reveal'd themselves to English air,

For there is nothing here,

Which, from the outward to the inward brought, Moulded thy baby thought.

Far off from human neighborhood,

Thou wert born, on a summer morn,

A mile beneath the cedar-wood.

Thy bounteous forehead was not fann'd

With breezes from our oaken glades,
But thou wert nursed in some delicious land
Of lavish lights, and floating shades:
And flattering thy childish thought
The oriental fairy brought,

At the moment of thy birth,

From old well-heads of haunted rills,
And the hearts of purple hills,

And shadow'd coves on a sunny shore,
The choicest wealth of all the earth,
Jewel or shell, or starry ore,

To deck thy cradle, Eleänore.

II.

Or the yellow-banded bees,
Thro' half-open lattices

Coming in the scented breeze,

Fed thee, a child, lying alone,

With whitest honey in fairy gardens cull'd—

A glorious child, dreaming alone,
In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down,
With the hum of swarming bees

Into dreamful slumber lull'd.

III.

Who may minister to thee?
Summer herself should minister

To thee, with fruitage golden-rinded
On golden salvers, or it may be,
Youngest Autumn, in a bower
Grape-thicken'd from the light, and blinded
With many a deep-hued bell-like flower

Of fragrant trailers, when the air

Sleepeth over all the heaven,

And the crag that fronts the Even,
All along the shadowy shore,

Crimsons over an inland mere,

Eleänore!

IV.

How may full-sail'd verse express,
How may measured words adore
The full-flowing harmony

Of thy swan-like stateliness,

Is nothing sudden, nothing single;

Like two streams of incense free

From one censer in one shrine,

Thought and motion mingle,

To one another, even as tho'
They were modulated so

To an unheard melody,

Which lives about thee, and a sweep
Of richest pauses, evermore
Drawn from each other mellow-deep;
Who may express thee, Eleänore?

V.

I stand before thee, Eleänore;

I see thy beauty gradually unfold,
Daily and hourly, more and more.
I muse, as in a trance, the while

Slowly, as from a cloud of gold,
Comes out thy deep ambrosial smile.
I muse, as in a trance, whene'er

The languors of thy love-deep eyes Float on to me. I would I were

So tranced, so rapt in ecstasies, To stand apart, and to adore, Gazing on thee for evermore, Serene, imperial Eleänore!

VI.

Sometimes, with most intensity

Gazing, I seem to see

Thought folded over thought, smiling asleep,
Slowly awaken'd, grow so full and deep
In thy large eyes, that, overpower'd quite,
I cannot veil, or droop my sight,

But am as nothing in its light:

As tho' a star, in inmost heaven set,

Ev'n while we gaze on it,

Should slowly round his orb, and slowly grow

To a full face, there like a sun remain

Fix'd-then as slowly fade again,

And draw itself to what it was before;

So full, so deep, so slow,

Thought seems to come and go

In thy large eyes, imperial Eleänore.