 | The Poetical Works of John Payne |  |
BELPHOEBE.
SHE may not give thee love nor any hate:Her life is calm and senseless as the flowers
That fall around her in such scented showers:
Snow-calm, she standeth in the present's gate,
Unmindful if the world is wound with fate
About her life, knowing not hope nor doubt
Nor any yearning for the things without.
Her days are folded in a flowerful state,
A charm of lily-snows and jasmine-sweets.
It irks her nothing if the pale god broods
Above the haunts of toil or sorrow beats
With leaden wing: she knoweth not the goods
Nor ills of men, standing where summer meets
With Spring upon the marges of the woods.
| The Poetical Works of John Payne | |