Dearest, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.

The very flowers that bend and meet,
In sweetening others, grow more sweet;
The clouds by day, the stars by night,
Inweave their floating locks of light;
The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid,
Is but the embrace of sun and shade.

How few that love us have we found!
How wide the world that girds them round!

1.

Ah, the symmetry how dainty
Of the limbs uprearing slender!
On the little neck, how charming
Of the lovely head the poise is!

Half alluring, half pathetic
Is the face, whereon the glances
Of a woman mingle warmly
With a child's unsullied laughter.

Were there not upon thy shoulders
Here and there, like sombre shadows,
Of the dust of earth some traces,
I should liken thee to Venus —

To the goddess Aphrodite,
Rising lovely from the ocean,
Sweetly blooming, fair and shining,
And, I need not mention, clean.

I

From his far isle the gentle stranger came
Who taught our lips to love his liquid name,
Found a new home beneath our western sky
Won all our hearts and left us but to die.

I can remember well
My very early youth,
My sumptuous Isabel,
Who was a girl of truth;
Of golden truth; — we do not often see
Those whose whole lives have only known to be.

So sunlight, very warm,
On harvest fields and trees,
Could not more sweetly form
Rejoicing melodies
For these deep things, than Isabel for me;
I lay beneath her soul as a lit tree.

With a spreading and spreading
(Like that) of the clouds that sit at morning
On the moor of Kasuga, —
I increase in my love
In the lapse of months and days.

Doubtlesse Christ onely loved man the most,
Entring into the world, (though he might boast
Rightly indeede to be the Sonne of God,
Man to deliver from Gods smarting Rod,
On him he rooke, such was his love to man ,
Not in arerages wherein he had ran,
Duely to pay the debts which he did owe,
Expressing plainly that he lov'd man so.

O that our love with zeale to Christ might burne,

Mourne we'de for Christ as he for us did mournt ,
A low, A low, Oh hone for us he cry'd,
Labouring with love when he did earst abide,

I

For whom is Beauty? Where no eyes attend
As richly goes the day; and every dawn
Reddens along green rivers whereupon
None ever gaze. Think, could earth see an end
Of all the twilight lovers whose thoughts blend
With scents of garden blooms they call their own,
Would not as close the yellowest rose outblown
Be, after them, the unmurmurous evening's friend?
Then wherefore Beauty, if in mortal eye

The dark has passed, and the chill Autumn morn
Unrolls her faded glories in the fields;
Dead are the gilded air-hosts newly-born,
The hardiest flowers droop their sodden shields,
For lovely Summer hath cut short her stay —
The fickle goddess, loaded with delight,
Grown wantonly unconstant, fled away
Under a hoar-frost mantle yesternight.
In one brief hour, the warm and flashing skies
Pale in the marble dawn; we cannot choose,
But marvel that hearts turn to stone, and eyes
Brimful of passion all their lustre lose.

FROM METASTASIO

Believe me, dear girl, when I swear,
Though a stranger you're yet to Love's pain,
There is something too soft in your air,
Too gentle for scorn and disdain:

Though the torments of Love you mayn't know,
Yet cruel you never can prove;
For Pity, though colder than snow,
Is still the forerunner of Love.

TO WINTER.

Let happy mortals love the gaudy blooms
That deck the bosom of the laughing Spring,
And, fann'd by her warm breath, profusely fling
To the young gale their delicate perfumes; —
Stern, rugged Winter, thy congenial glooms
A mournful pleasure to that bosom bring,
Where pale Despondence spreads her lurid wing,
Which Fate severe to ceaseless sorrow dooms.