Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/482

438 Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight—

Two insulated phantoms of the brain:

It is not so—I see them full and plain—

An old man, and a female young and fair,

Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein

The blood is nectar:—but what doth she there,

With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?

CXLIX.

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life,

Where on the heart and from the heart we took

Our first and sweetest nurture—when the wife,

Blest into mother, in the innocent look,

Or even the piping cry of lips that brook

No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives

Man knows not—when from out its cradled nook

She sees her little bud put forth its leaves—

What may the fruit be yet?—I know not—Cain was Eve's.

CL.

But here Youth offers to Old Age the food,

The milk of his own gift: it is her Sire

To whom she renders back the debt of blood

Born with her birth:—No—he shall not expire