Musa

O MY lost beauty!--hast thou folded quiteThy wings of morning lightBeyond those iron gatesWhere Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,And Age upon his mound of ashes waitsTo chill our fiery dreams,Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams?

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,Whose flowers are silvered hair!Have I not loved thee long,Though my young lips have often done thee wrong,And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song?Ah, wilt thou yet return,Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?

Come to me!--I will flood thy silent shrineWith my soul's sacred wine,And heap thy marble floorsAs the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores,In leafy islands walled with madreporesAnd lapped in Orient seas,When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze.

Come to me!--thou shalt feed on honeyed words,Sweeter than song of birds;--No wailing bulbul's throat,No melting dulcimer's melodious noteWhen o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,Thy ravished sense might sootheWith flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.

Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen,Sought in those bowers of greenWhere loop the clustered vinesAnd the close-clinging dulcamara twines,--Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines,And Summer's fruited gems,And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,--Or stretched by grass-grown graves,Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns,Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bonesStill slumbering where they layWhile the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away.

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!Still let me dream and sing,--Dream of that winding shoreWhere scarlet cardinals bloom-for me no more,--The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor,And clustering nenupharsSprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars!

Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!--Come while the rose is red,--While blue-eyed Summer smilesOn the green ripples round yon sunken pilesWashed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles,And on the sultry airThe chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer!

Oh for thy burning lips to fire my brainWith thrills of wild, sweet pain!--On life's autumnal blast,Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,--Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!--Behold thy new-decked shrine,And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!"