University of Virginia Library

MY LADY'S SOUL

Like some enchanted dweller in the deep,
I swim among the grottoes of your soul.
Far, far away the cliffs rise rough and steep;
Far, far above the ruffling billows roll.
Here a new world, unseen of any eye
But mine, unfolds its unfamiliar blooms
In opal calms unuttered to the sky
And tremulous light of phosphorescent glooms.

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And if my soul revisit the raw day,
For joy of all that secret beauty blind,
I, merman-like, have little care to stay
In the thin air, but plunge again to find
Those deeps unvisited from which I came,
Whose simplest wonders have not yet a name.
1895