Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1823.pdf/22

21 Literary Gazette, 22nd February 1823, Page 124

LEANDER AND HERO.

It is a tale that many songs have told, And old, if tale of love can e'er be old; Yet dear to me this lingering o'er the fate Of two so young, so true, so passionate! And thou, the idol of my harp, the Soul Of poetry, to me my hope, my whole Happiness of existence, there will be Some gentlest tones that I have caught from thee! Will not each heart-pulse vibrate, as I tell Of faith even unto death unchangeable! and his ! they should be, When youthful lovers talk of constancy, Invoked. Oh, for one breath of softest song, Such as on summer evenings floats along, To murmur low their history! every word That whispers of them, should be like those heard At moonlight casements, when th' awakened maid Sighs her soft answer to the serenade. - - -   She stood beside the altar, like the Queen, The bright-eyed Queen that she was worshipping. Her hair was bound with roses, which did fling A perfume round, for she that morn had been To gather roses, that were clustering now Amid the shadowy curls upon her brow. One of the loveliest daughters of that land, Divinest Greece! that taught the painter's hand To give eternity to loveliness; One of those dark-eyed maids, to whom belong The glory and the beauty of each Song Thy poets breathed, for it was theirs to bless With life the pencil and the lyre's dreams, Giving reality to visioned gleams Of bright divinities. Amid the crowd That in the presence of young bowed, Was one who knelt with fond idolatry, As if in homage to some deity, Gazing upon her as each gaze he took Must be the very last—that intense look That none but lovers give, when they would trace On their heart's tablets some adored face. The radiant Priestess from the temple past: Yet there staid, to catch the last Wave of her fragrant hair, the last low fall Of her white feet, so light and musical;