Ah Me, If I Grew Sweet To Man
Ah me, if I grew sweet to man
It was but as a rose that can
No longer keep the breath that heaves
And swells among its folded leaves.
The pressing fragrance would unclose
The flower, and I become a rose,
That unimpeachable and fair
Planted its sweetness in the air.
No art I used men's love to draw;
I lived but by my being's law,
As roses are by heaven designed
To bring the honey to the wind.
And On My Eyes Dark Sleep By Night
Come, dark-eyed Sleep, thou child of Night,
Give me thy dreams, thy lies;
Lead me through the horny portal white
The pleasure day denies.
O bring the kiss I could not take
From lips that would not give;
Bring me the heart I could not break,
The bliss for which I live.
I care not if I slumber blest
By fond delusion; nay,
Put me on Phoan's lips to rest,
And cheat the cruel day!
Second Thoughts
I thought of leaving her for a day
In town, it was such an iron winter
At Durdans, the garden frosty clay,
The woods as dry as any splinter,
The sky congested. I would break
From the deep, lethargic, country air
To the shining lamps, to the clash of the play,
And to-morrow, wake
Beside her, a thousand things to say.
I planned-O more-I had almost started;-
I lifted her face in my hands to kiss,-
A face in a border of fox's fur,
For the bitter black wind had stricken her,
And she wore it-her soft hair straying out
Where it buttoned against the gray, leather snout:
In an instant we should have parted;
But at sight of the delicate world within
That fox-fur collar, from brow to chin,
At sight of those wonderful eyes from the mine,
Coal pupils, an iris of glittering spa,
And the wild, ironic, defiant shine
As of a creature behind a bar
One has captured, and, when three lives are past,
May hope to reach the heart of at last
All that, and the love at her lips, combined
To shew me what folly it were to miss
A face with such thousand things to say,
And beside these, such thousand more to spare,
For the shining lamps, for the clash of the play-
O madness; not for a single day
Could I leave her! I stayed behind.
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