Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/16

12 Save where upon a wide and grove-bound plain

Lay the white tents of soldiers, and the drum

Beat the tattoo that warned them to repose,

Or the guard's sleepless vigil.

But one heard

The solemn beat of that tattooing drum,

To whom e'en weariness, and a day's toil

Beneath a torrid sun, could not win sleep.

He with the form towering and graceful,

And yet delicate—a boy in seeming.

The high pale brow, and the dark wavy hair,

Have a fine placid beauty; but the eye,

Save now, when tears are in it, has a fire

That makes the face seem fearful; and the lip,

Used to compression, has the bent of scorn—

A dark, fierce, bitter scorn—the scorn of hate.

But he is softened now; the scene, the time,

Have found a soul-spring in his stormy being;

And thoughts have come of a time like to this,

When he was sinless, and when love first fell

Upon his wayward heart. But like the dew

Within the calyx of some noxious flower,

It but distilled its poison, and his soul

Steeped deadliness within it. She he loved

Was like a star to him, she was so pure;

A fair young creature, with a quiet face,

And an eye clear as heaven, and as starry.

Yet was there beauty in her quietness;

As a lake, when 'tis waveless, looks most deep.

And her he loved—and 'twas perchance because

That she was so unlike him that she gave

More scope to his impetuous nature than would one

Who could be wild as he was. But he loved—

No, worshiped had been better said than loved—

For he had set her image in his heart,

And bowed him down like an idolater,

In impious adoration, ere he knew

Or hardly cared to know, that she would look