All those who love—and who e'er loved like thee, Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo, Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The ardors of a vision which obscure The very idol of its portraiture. He faints, dissolved into a sea of love; But thou art Love itself - ruling the motion Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May Had not brought forth this morn, your wedding day. "Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew, Ye faint-eyed children of the Hours," Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers Which she had from the breathing A table near of polished porphyry. They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye That looked on them, a fragrance from the touch Whose warmth checked their life; a light such As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, Of gentle beauty on the flowers; there lay 20 e'er, Garnett || ever, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay. rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms, Fiordispina and her nurse are now step by step and stair by stair, That withered woman, gray and white and brown More like a trunk by lichens overgrown Than anything which once could have been hu "How slow and painfully you seem to walk, Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk." "And well it may, Fiordispina, dearest well-a-day! Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.” With the sweet dance your heart must keep to night. What! would you take all beauty and delight And leave to grosser mortals? And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet And subtle mystery by which spirits meet? THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE AT the creation of the Earth Of an ever-lengthening line The Birth of Pleasure. Forman || no title, Garnett. Published by Garnett, 1862, and dated, 1819. LOVE, HOPE, DESIRE, AND FEAR AND many there were hurt by that strong boy; His name, they said, was Pleasure. And near him stood, glorious beyond measure, Four Ladies who possess all empery In earth and air and sea; Nothing that lives from their award is free. Their names will I declare to thee, - And they the regents are Of the four elements that frame the heart,- By force or circumstance or sleight Desire presented her [false] glass, and then Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair And, dazed by that bright error, It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger, Touched with her palsying spear, — So that, as if a frozen torrent, The blood was curdled in its current; It dared not speak, even in look or motion, Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear. Published by Garnett, 1862, and dated, 1821. Between Desire and Fear thou wert A wretched thing, poor Heart! Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast, Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought, Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies, And after long and vain endurance The poor At one birth these four were born |