Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/115

Rh Her very self becomes more dear,

That she is fair and dear to him;

And musing thus, a single tear

Falls from her eye, and breaks her dream.

She starts, and putting back the curls

From her pure forehead, smiles for shame;

From her white throat untwines the pearls,

And gazing on them, breathes his name.

At length, in snowy robe, she kneels,

And asks of Heaven to bless her love;

And to forgive, if what she feels

Be not what angels feel above:

Then rising seeks her couch, to sleep

Her happy slumbers, soft and deep.

ELEVEN.

The soft air is so full of light, downflowing

From all the lamps above, that like a stream

Escaped of heaven's radiance, the glowing

And sweetly blended rays together gleam.

A kind of listening presence, too, seems gliding

Over and through the earth, that piercing pries

Into each quiet nook, and seeks the hiding

Secrets of all men out, with curious eyes.

Between the window-bars of beauty's chamber,

It enters on the sweetly perfumed air;

Touching the fringes of her eyes with amber,

And weaving pale gold threads with her soft hair.

Lying upon her lips, it hears and numbers

The times she murmurs in her pensive sleep;

And learns the name but uttered in her slumbers,

And steals the tear, if in her dream she weep,

It floats abroad, through every crevice darting;

Among the dense black shadows stealing in;

And if the breeze, in fitful play upstarting,

Parts but a shade-tree bough, it shoots between.

The conscious air with viewless life is panting;

Mysterious eyes seek nameless mysteries out;