Thou that faintly smilest still, Looking at the set of day, Of a maiden past away, Ere the placid lips be cold? Wherefore those faint smiles of thine, Spiritual Adeline ? What hope or fear or joy is thine? Do beating hearts of salient springs Hast thou heard the butterflies What they say betwixt their wings? With what voice the violet woos To his heart the silver dews? Or when little airs arise, How the merry bluebell rings To the mosses underneath? Hast thou looked upon the breath Of the lilies at sunrise? Wherefore that faint smile of thine, Some honey-converse feeds thy mind, In love with thee forgets to close His curtains, wasting odorous sighs All night long on darkness blind. What aileth thee? whom waitest thou With thy softened, shadowed brow, And those dew-lit eyes of thine, Thou faint smiler, Adeline? Lovest thou the doleful wind When thou gazest at the skies? Doth the low-tongued Orient Wander from the side o' the morn, Dripping with Sabæan spice On thy pillow, lowly bent With melodious airs lovelorn, Breathing light against thy face, Round thy neck in subtle ring And ye talk together still, In the language wherewith Spring Hence that look and smile of thine, A CHARACTER. I. WITH a half-glance upon the sky II. He spake of beauty: that the dull Life in dead stones, or spirit in air; Then looking as 't were in a glass, He smoothed his chin and sleeked his hair, And said the earth was beautiful. III. He spake of virtue: not the gods More purely, when they wish to charm Pallas and Juno sitting by: And with a sweeping of the arm, And a lack-lustre dead-blue eye, Devolved his rounded periods. IV. Most delicately hour by hour V. With lips depressed as he were meek, Himself unto himself he sold: Upon himself himself did feed: Quiet, dispassionate, and cold, And other than his form of creed, With chiselled features clear and sleek. |