MARGARET.

O SWEET pale Margaret,
O rare pale Margaret,

What lit your eyes with tearful power,
Like moonlight on a falling shower?
Who lent you, love, your mortal dower
Of pensive thought and aspect pale,
Your melancholy, sweet and frail
As perfume of the cuckoo-flower?
From the westward-winding flood,

From the evening-lighted wood,

From all things outward you have won

A tearful grace, as though you stood
Between the rainbow and the sun.

The very smile before you speak,
That dimples your transparent cheek,
Encircles all the heart, and feedeth

The senses with a still delight

Of dainty sorrow without sound, Like the tender amber round, Which the moon about her spreadeth, Moving through a fleecy night.

You love, remaining peacefully,

To hear the murmur of the strife,

But enter not the toil of life. Your spirit is the calmed sea,

Laid by the tumult of the fight.

You are the evening star, alway

Remaining betwixt dark and bright:

Lulled echoes of laborious day

Come to you, gleams of mellow light
Float by you on the verge of night.

What can it matter, Margaret,

What songs below the waning stars

The lion-heart, Plantagenet,

Sang looking through his prison bars?
Exquisite Margaret, who can tell

The last wild thought of Chatelet,

Just ere the falling axe did part

The burning brain from the true heart,
Even in her sight he loved so well?

A fairy shield your Genius made

And gave you on your natal day
Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade,
Keeps real sorrow far away.
You move not in such solitudes,
You are not less divine,

But more human in your moods,

Than your twin-sister, Adeline.

Your hair is darker, and your eyes

Touched with a somewhat darker hue,
And less aërially blue,

But ever trembling through the dew

Of dainty-woful sympathies.

O sweet pale Margaret,

O rare pale Margaret,

Come down, come down, and hear me speak:

Tie up the ringlets on your cheek:

The sun is just about to set.

The arching limes are tall and shady,

And faint, rainy lights are seen,
Moving in the leavy beech.

Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady,
Where all day long you sit between
Joy and woe, and whisper each.

Or only look across the lawn,
Look out below your bower-eaves,

Look down, and let your blue eyes dawn
Upon me through the jasmine-leaves.

THE BLACKBIRD.

O BLACKBIRD! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat and dwell.

The espaliers and the standards all

Are thine; the range of lawn and park: The unnetted blackhearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden wall.

Yet, though I spared thee kith and kin,
Thy sole delight is, sitting still,
With that gold dagger of thy bill

To fret the summer jennetin.

A golden bill! the silver tongue,
Cold February loved, is dry:

Plenty corrupts the melody

That made thee famous once, when young: