Selections from the Poetical Works

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But the wife smiled? His nerves are grown firmer: Mine he brings now and utters no murmur. Vcnienti occurnte morbo ! With which moral I drop my theorbo. SONG. 1 Nay but you, who do not love her, Is she not pure gold, my mistress? Holds earth aught?speak truth?above her ? Aught like this tress, see, and this tress, And this last fairest tress of all, So fair, see, ere I let it fall ? Because, you spend your lives in praising; To praise, you search the wide world over; Then why not witness, calmly gazing, If earth holds aught?speak truth?above her? Above this tress, and this, I touch But cannot praise, I love so much ! A SERENADE AT THE VILLA. That was I, you heard last night, When there rose no moon at all, Nor, to pierce the strained and tight Tent of heaven, a planet small: Life was dead, and so was light. Not a twinkle from the fly, Not a glimmer from the worm. When the crickets stopped their cry, When the owls forbore a term, You heard music; that was I. Earth turned in her sleep with pain, Sultrily suspired for proof: In at heaven and out again, Lightning !?where it broke the roof, Bloodlike, some few drops of rain. What they could my words expressed, O my love, my all, my one ! Singing helped the verses best, And when singing's best was done, To my lute I left the rest. So wore night; the East was gray, White the broad-faced hemlock flowers: There would be another day; Ere its first of heavy hours Found me, I had passed away. What became of all the hopes, Words and song and lute as well ? Say, this struck you: When life gropes Feebly for the path where fell Light last on the evening slopes, ? One friend in that path shall be, To secure my step from wrong;...