Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/531

1850-60.] Your loveliest perfume;

No more upon your pure, immortal dyes,

Shall rest my happy eyes.

I pass by: at thy foot

O, mount of my delight!

Ere yet from out thy sight

I drop my voiceless lute;

It is in vain to strive to carry hence

Its olden eloquence.

Your sacred groves no more

My singing shall prolong,

With echoes of my song

Doubling it o'er and o'er.

Haunt of the muses, lost to wistful eyes

What dreams of thee shall rise!

Rise but to be dispelled,—

For here where I am cast,

Such visions may not last,

By sterner fancies quelled:—

Relentless Nemesis my doom hath sent,

This cruel banishment!

CHILDHOOD.

AUTUMNALIA.

crimson color lays

As bright as beauty's blush along the West:

And a warm, golden haze,

Promising sheafs of ripe autumnal days

To crown the old year's crest,

Hangs in mid-air, a half-pellucid maze,

Through which the sun, at set,

Grown round and rosy, looks with Bacchian blush,

For an old wine-god meet,

Whose brows are dripping with the grape-blood sweet,

As if his Southern flush

Rejoiced him in his Northern-zoned retreat.

The amber-colored air,

Musical is with hum of tiny things

Held idly struggling there,—

As if the golden mist untangled were

About the viewless wings

That beat out music on the gilded snare.