Page:The Venetian Bracelet.pdf/223

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My heart is too much in the things which profane it; The cold, and the worldly, why am I like them? Vanity! with my lute chords I must chain it, Nor thus let it sully the minstrel's best gem.

It rises before me, that island, where blooming, The flowers in their thousands are comrades for me; And where if one perish, so sweet its entombing, The welcome it seems of fresh leaves to the tree.

I'll wander among them when morning is weeping Her earliest tears, if such pearls can be tears; When the birds and the roses together are sleeping, Till the mist of the daybreak, like hope fulfill'd, clears.