Thou that faintly smilest still,
As a Naiad in a well,

Looking at the set of day,
Or a phantom two hours old

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?
Who talketh with thee, Adeline?
For sure thou art not all alone:

Do beating hearts of salient springs
Keep measure with thine own?

Hast thou heard the butterflies

What they say betwixt their wings?
Or in stillest evenings

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,
Shadowy, dreaming Adeline?

Some honey-converse feeds thy mind,
Some spirit of a crimson rose

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,
While his locks a-dropping twined

Round thy neck in subtle ring
Make a carcanet of rays

And ye talk together still,

In the language wherewith Spring
Letters cowslips on the hill?

Hence that look and smile of thine,
Spiritual Adeline.

A CHARACTER.

I.

WITH a half-glance upon the sky
At night he said, "The wanderings
Of this most intricate Universe
Teach me the nothingness of things."
Yet could not all creation pierce
Beyond the bottom of his eye.

II.

He spake of beauty: that the dull
Saw no divinity in grass,

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
He canvassed human mysteries,
And trod on silk, as if the winds
Blew his own praises in his eyes,
And stood aloof from other minds
In impotence of fancied power.

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.