NYMPH of the downward smile and sidelong glance,
In what diviner moments of the day
Art thou most lovely ?-When gone far astray
Into the labyrinths of sweet utterance?
Or when serenely wand'ring in a trance
Of sober thought? Or when starting away
With careless robe to meet the morning ray
Thou spar'st the flowers in thy mazy dance?
Haply 'tis when thy ruby lips part sweetly,
And so remain, because thou listenest :
But thou to please wert nurtured so completely
That I can never tell what mood is best.
I shall as soon pronounce which Grace more neatly
Trips it before Apollo than the rest.
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
WHEN
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love ;-then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
were stedfast as thou art
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
1 Written on a Blank Page in Shakespeare's Poems, facing "A Lover's Complaint".
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of
pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.
IT IS NOT BEAUTY I DEMAND
IT is not Beauty I demand,
A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair :
Tell me not of your starry eyes,
Your lips that seem on roses fed,
Your breasts, where Cupid tumbling lies
Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed :-
A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks
Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours,
A breath that softer music speaks
Than summer winds a-wooing flowers,
These are but gauds: nay what are lips?
Coral beneath the ocean stream,
Whose brink when your adventurer slips
Full oft he perisheth on them.
And what are cheeks, but ensigns oft
That wave hot youth to fields of blood?
Did Helen's breast, though ne'er so soft,
Do Greece or Ilium any good?
Eyes can with baleful ardour burn ;
Poison can breath, that erst perfumed ;
There's many a white hand holds an urn
With lover's hearts to dust consumed.
For crystal brows there's nought within;
They are but empty cells for pride;
He who the Syren's hair would win
Is mostly strangled in the tide.
Give me, instead of Beauty's bust,
A tender heart, a loyal mind,
Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never link'd with error find,-
One in whose gentle bosom I
Could pour my secret heart of woes, Like the care-burthen'd honey-fly
That hides his murmurs in the rose,
My earthly Comforter! whose love
So indefeasible might be
That, when my spirit wom'd above,
Hers could not stay, for sympathy.
Rose-tree! when the West
yon
Breathes on her with too warm a zest,
She turns her cheek
away,
Yet, if one moment he refrain,
She turns her cheek to him again,
And wooes him still to stay.
Is she not like a maiden coy
Pressed by some amorous-breathing boy?
Though coy, she courts him too :
Winding away her slender form,
She will not have him woo so warm,
And yet will have him woo!
SHE IS NOT FAIR TO OUTWARD VIEW
HE is not fair to outward view
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me.
O then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.
But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne'er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.
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