Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/458

 Gave a right pleasant and bewitching tone To each wild vagrant blast.

Meseems, After this wondrous guise, that maiden sweet Stood visible before me, while the beams Of Dian pale, laughed round her little feet With icy lustre, through the narrow pane; And this discourse she held in merry vein; Although methought 'twas counterfeited, and The matter strange, that none might understand.

She told me, that the moon was in her wane— And life was tiding on, and that the world Was waxen old—that nature grew unkind, And men grew selfish quite, and sore bechurled— That Honour was a bubble of the mind— And Virtue was a nothing undefined— And as for Woman, She, indeed, could claim A title all her own—She had a name And place in Time's long chronicles, Deceit— And Glory was a phantom—Death a cheat!

She said I might remember her, for she Had trifled with me in mine infancy; And in those days, that now are long agone,