Or sometimes they swell and move,
Pressing up against the land,

With motions of the outer sea:

And the self-same influence

Controlleth all the soul and sense
Of Passion gazing upon thee.
His bow-string slacken'd, languid Love,
Leaning his cheek upon his hand,
Droops both his wings, regarding thee,
And so would languish evermore,
Serene, imperial Eleänore.

VIII.

But when I see thee roam, with tresses unconfined,

While the amorous, odorous wind

Breathes low between the sunset and the moon;

Or, in a shadowy saloon,

On silken cushions half reclined;

I watch thy grace; and in its place
My heart a charmed slumber keeps,
While I muse upon thy face;

And a languid fire creeps

Thro' my veins to all my frame,

Dissolvingly and slowly soon

From thy rose-red lips My name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,

With dinning sound my ears are rife,

My tremulous tongue faltereth, I lose my colour, I lose my breath, I drink the cup of a costly death, Brimm'd with delirious draughts of warmest life.

I die with my delight, before

I hear what I would hear from thee;

Yet tell my name again to me,

I would be dying evermore,

So dying ever, Eleänore.

I.

My life is full of weary days,

But good things have not kept aloof, Nor wander'd into other ways:

I have not lack'd thy mild reproof, Nor golden largess of thy praise.

And now shake hands across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go:
Shake hands once more: I cannot sink
So far-far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below.

II.

When in the darkness over me

The four-handed mole shall scrape,

Plant thou no dusky cypress-tree,

Nor wreathe thy cap with doleful crape,
But pledge me in the flowing grape.

And when the sappy field and wood

Grow green beneath the showery gray,
And rugged barks begin to bud,

And thro' damp holts new-flush'd with may,
Ring sudden scritches of the jay,

Then let wise Nature work her will,

And on my clay her darnel grow;
Come only, when the days are still,

And at my headstone whisper low,
And tell me if the woodbines blow.

EARLY SONNETS.

I.

AHH

ΤΟ

As when with downcast eyes we muse and brood,
And ebb into a former life, or seem

To lapse far back in some confused dream
To states of mystical similitude;

If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair,
Ever the wonder waxeth more and more,
So that we say, 'All this hath been before,
All this hath been, I know not when or where.'
So, friend, when first I look'd upon your face,
Our thought gave answer each to each, so true—
Opposed mirrors each reflecting each—
That tho' I knew not in what time or place,
Methought that I had often met with you,
And either lived in either's heart and speech.