YOUR picture smiles as first it smiled; The ring you gave is still the same; Your letter tells, O changing child! No tidings since it came.
That keeps intelligence with you,-
Red when you love, and rosier red,
And when you love not, pale and blue.
Alas! that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession ;
Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.
HINE eyes still shined for me, though far
I lonely roved the land or sea :
As I behold yon evening star,
Which yet beholds not me.
This morn I climbed the misty hill,
And roamed the pastures through ;
How danced thy form before my path
Amidst the deep-eyed dew!
When the redbird spreads his sable wing,
And showed his side of flame;
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.
HE sense of the world is short,
ΤΗ Long and various the report,
To love and be beloved;
Men and gods have not outlearned it;
And, how oft soe'er they've turned it,
Not to be improved.
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,
Beauty's not beautiful to me,
But sceptred genius, aye inorbed,
Culminating in her sphere.
This Hermione absorbed
The lustre of the land and ocean,
Hills and islands, cloud and tree,
In her form and motion.
"I ask no bauble miniature,
Nor ringlets dead
Shorn from her comely head,
Now that morning not disdains
Mountains and the misty plains—
Her colossal portraiture;
They her heralds be,
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,
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;
In old Bassorah's schools, I seemed
Hermit vowed to books and gloom,-
Ill-bestead for gay bridegroom.
I was by the touch redeemed;
When thy meteor glances came,
We talked at large of worldly fate,
And drew truly every trait.
"Once I dwelt apart,
Now I live with all;
As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side
Seems, by the traveller espied,
A door into the mountain heart,
So didst thou quarry and unlock
Highways for me through the rock.
"Now, deceived, thou wanderest
In strange lands unblest;
kindred come to soothe me.
Southwind is my next of blood;
He is come through fragrant wood,
Drugged with spice from climates warm,
And in every twinkling glade,
And twilight nook,
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,
Above her will, be true;
And, in her strict resort
To winds and waterfalls,
And autumn's sunlit festivals,
To music, and to music's thought,
Inextricably bound,
She shall find thee, and be found.
Follow not her flying feet;
Come to us herself to meet.'
INITIAL, DÆMONIC, AND CELESTIAL LOVE.
7ENUS, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,-
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
This befell how long ago!
Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged:
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste;
With malice dared me to proclaim him,
That the maids and boys might name him.
Boy no more, he wears all coats,
Frocks and blouses, capes, capotes;
He bears no bow, or quiver, or wand,
Nor chaplet on his head or hand.
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;
And, if I tell you all my thought,
Though I comprehend it not,
In those unfathomable orbs
Every function he absorbs;
Doth eat, and drink, and fish, and shoot,
And write, and reason, and compute,
And ride, and run, and have, and hold,
And whine, and flatter, and regret,
And kiss, and couple, and beget,
By those roving eyeballs bold.
Undaunted are their courages,
Right Cossacks in their forages;
Fleeter they than any creature,-
They are his steeds, and not his feature;
Inquisitive, and fierce, and fasting,
Restless, predatory, hasting;
And they pounce on other eyes
As lions on their prey;
And round their circles is writ,
Plainer than the day,
Underneath, within, above,-
Love-love-love-love.
He lives in his eyes;
There doth digest, and work, and spin,
And buy, and sell, and lose, and win;
He rolls them with delighted motion,
Joy-tides swell their mimic ocean.
Yet holds he them with tautest rein,
That they may seize and entertain
The glance that to their glance opposes,
Like fiery honey sucked from roses.
He palmistry can understand,
Imbibing virtue by his hand,
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