Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/83

Rh Ay, let thy proud lip wear for me

The scornful curve it graces so;

The challenge may perchance call forth

My slumbering pride—I do not know.

Yet hardly still can I despise

The falsehood that hath been so sweet;

Hardly, when thinking on our past,

My burning words of scorn repeat.

Yet do I scorn thee; in my soul

My nobler nature spurns thy art;

And though my senses are enthralled,

A higher shrine must have my heart.

Go, fair enchantress; not thy brow,

Or lip, or cheek, or witching grace,

Or seeming worth, can ever win

In this changed heart a lasting place.

SNOWDROPS.

away your snowdrops pale, I can not bear the sight—

They were woven in our Ada's hair upon her bridal night;

And fairer looked the snowy buds than India's rarest pearls,

And fairer than them both the brow that beamed beneath her curls.

That lily brow, those tresses dark, O ne'er so fair a bride

Hath trembled at the altar-place her chosen one beside;

And never heart more pure and fond, a wedding gift was brought

Than Ada's in its sinlessness, its sweet and earnest thought.

The snowy robe, and lily brow, and bridal garland pale,

And dark bright tresses shining through the silver-woven vail;