 | Mundi et Cordis |  |
187
I. INDIRECTION.
1
Lady! I know not what dark spell inthrals me,Shutting dear Beauty from my senseless soul!
List I thy music? A dread accent calls me
Unto Death's sepulchre, or grass-green knoll!
Feel I thy little hand, fast closed in mine,
A lily field, fair-river'd with clear blue?
I clasp Death's icy fingers; and combine
Therewith mine own, till they grow lifeless too!
Or gaze I on thine eyes, my own eyes' glass,
Where Light hath made two azure palaces?
Death's sockets fright me; and obscurely pass
Worms through their blanks, and fouler things than these!
Press I my lips upon thy queenly brow?
I bite the dust of graves, and graveward grow!
188
2
There is a matchless beauty in thine eye,Where gentle Love, as in a temple, dwells;
But there the shadow of Mortality
Lies deeply buried, and a sigh compels
From those who look into the gloom of things,
And see Decay lurk in the floweret-bells;
And black Corruption in the brightest springs;
And deadly Famine where the harvest swells;
And a dry Desert where the forest rings
With the glad songs of spring's wing'd oracles;
Storms in the clearest sky, and in the spheres
A Chaos! Unto such, thy smiles are tears;
And the bright beauty of thy love-lit eye
Full of the shadow of Mortality!
| Mundi et Cordis | |