The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Those eyes, dark stars of might and gladness!
Those eyes that breathe soft gloom, as they
Had gathered up the soul of midnight,
And poured it back into the day—
What secret sources feed their lustres?
Their Grecian fountains far away.

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I see them lifting up their splendour
While from its lair some Thought upsprings
Or hangs in its aerial lightness
Suspended upon balanced wings:
Once more they flash, as on its object
That Thought in triumph drops and clings.

3

I see those lips whose every motion
Is music; fragrance every breath:
That cheek which glows like clouds of sunset,
Or gleams as mildly as a wreath
Of crimson fruit in clear streams imaged
Against a dark rich ground beneath!

4

Those hands in grace a moment folded,
Light hands with fancies light that play,
Lifted as though some lute or viol
Hung viewless in the air, and they
In passing brushed its cords of silver,
Or pointed the sweet sounds their way!

5

I know not quite if Soul or Spirit
Within thee dwell;—few care to know:—
At least without, and all around thee,
A soul is hovering, swift or slow,
In undulating halo bending
With every movement to and fro!

6

How fresh must be the airs that fanned thee
A warbler at thy mother's knee!
The wells, thy radiant baths; the ocean;
The infinitely-odoured lea;
The caverned and Eolian forests—
O Isle, how beauteous thou must be!

7

That Queen who held in chains the Roman,
That Queen who spurned th' Augustan chains,
Sailed by it with her golden galleys;
Nor wholly yet the lustre wanes
That pageant flung beyond the margin,
And inland far o'er vales and plains.

8

Greece slumbers yet; but all her glories
Revive in thee: in thee restored
She walks the world, while round thy footsteps
The might of all her songs is poured;
And other times, and lands barbaric
Are taught what ancient Earth adored.

Corcyra.

University of Virginia Library

TO A GREEK LADY.

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