III.

COLD and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly

meek,

Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd,

Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek,

Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound;

Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient

wrong

Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before

Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound,

Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the

night long

Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more,

But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground,

Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar,

Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave,

Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found

The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave.

IV.

1.

A MILLION emeralds break from the ruby-budded

lime

In the little grove where I sit -ah, wherefore cannot 1 be

Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland,

When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,

Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,

The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the Land?

2.

star!

Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet

and small!

And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite;

And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar

And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall;

And up in the high Hall-gaiden I see her pass like a light;

But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading

3.

When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race?

I met her abroad with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd;

I bow'd to his lady-sister as she rode by on the

moor;

But the fire of a foolish pride flash'd over her beautiful face.

O child, you wrong your beauty, believe it, in being so proud;

Your father has wealth well-gotten, and I am nameless and poor.

4.

I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander

and steal;

I know it, and smile a hard-set smile, like a stoic, or

like

A wiser epicurean, and let the world have its

way:

For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;