Page:Maud, and other poems.djvu/46

26 Cleopatra-like as of old To entangle me when we met, To have her lion roll in a silken net And fawn at a victor's feet.

Ah, what shall I be at fifty Should Nature keep me alive, If I find the world so bitter When I am but twenty-five? Yet, if she were not a cheat, If Maud were all that she seem'd, And her smile were all that I dream'd, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet.

What if tho' her eye seem'd full Of a kind intent to me, What if that dandy-despot, he,