Page:The Hundred Best Poems (lyrical) in the English language - second series.djvu/86

  As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiæ? Or may I woo thee In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, By bards who died content on pleasant sward, Leaving great verse unto a little clan? O, give me their old vigour, and unheard Save of the quiet Primrose, and the span Of heaven and few ears. Rounded by thee, my song should die away Content as theirs, Rich in the simple worship of a day.

 40.

BRIGHT star, would I were stedfast as thou art- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever or else swoon to death. Buxton Forman's Text.  64