Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/221

 ARIEL

thou on earth to-day, immortal one,

How wouldst thou, in the starlight of thine eld,

The likeness of that morntide look upon

Which men beheld?

How might it move thee, imaged in time's glass,

As when the tomb has kept

Unchanged the face of one who slept

Too soon, yet moulders not, though seasons come and pass?

Has Death a wont to stay the soul no less?

And art thou still what was erewhile,—

A feeling born of music's restlessness—

A child's swift smile

Between its sobs—a wandering mist that rose

At dawn—a cloud that hung

The Euganéan hills among;

Thy voice, a wind-harp's strain in some enchanted close?

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