LXIV. "Would I had been some maiden coarse and poor! O me! that I should ever see the light! Those dragon eyes of anger'd Eleanor Do hunt me, day and night." LXV. She ceased in tears, fallen from hope and trust: To whom the Egyptian: "O, you tamely died! You should have clung to Fulvia's waist, and thrust The dagger thro' her side. LXVI. With that sharp sound the white dawn's creeping beams, Stol'n to my brain, dissolved the mystery Of folded sleep. The captain of my dreams Ruled in the eastern sky. LXVII. Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark, Ere I saw her, who clasp'd in her last trance Her murder'd father's head, or Joan of Arc, A light of ancient France; LXVIII. Or her, who knew that Love can vanquish Death, Who kneeling, with one arm about her king, Drew forth the poison with her balmy breath, LXIX. No memory labours longer from the deep Gold-mines of thought to lift the hidden ore That glimpses, moving up, than I from sleep To gather and tell o'er LXX. Each little sound and sight. With what dull pain Compass'd, how eagerly I sought to strike Into that wondrous track of dreams again! But no two dreams are like. LXXI. As when a soul laments, which hath been blest, Desiring what is mingled with past years, In yearnings that can never be exprest By signs or groans or tears; LXXII. Because all words, though cull'd with choicest art, Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat. MARGARET. O SWEET pale Margaret, O rare pale Margaret, What lit your eyes with tearful power, 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 though you stood Between the rainbow and the sun. The very smile before you speak, 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. 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. What can it matter, Margaret, What songs below the waning stars |