These blossoms snow upon thy lady's pall!
Go, pretty page, and in her ear
Whisper that the hour is near.
Softly tell her not to fear
Such calm favonian burial!
Go, pretty page! and soothly tell,-
The blossoms hang by a melting spell,
And fall they must ere a star wink thrice
Upon her closed eyes,
That now in vain are weeping their last tears At sweet life leaving, and these arbours green,Rich dowry from the Spirit of the Spheres,Alas! poor Queen!
FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER, SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR, DUSKETHA, AND BREAMA.
HAPPY, happy glowing fire! light!
Zep. Fragrant delicious
Dus. Let me to my glooms retire!
Bre. I to green-weed rivers bright!
Sal. Happy, happy glowing fire!
Dazzling bowers of soft retire,
Ever let my nourish'd wing,
Like a bat's, still wandering,
Faintly fan your fiery spaces,
Spirit sole in deadly places.
In unhaunted roar and blaze,
Open eyes that never daze,
Let me see the myriad shapes
Of men, and beasts, and fish, and apes,
Portray'd in many a fiery den,
And wrought by spumy bitumen
On the deep intenser roof,
Arched every way aloof.
Let me breathe upon their skies,
And anger their live tapestries;
Free from cold, and every care
Of chilly rain and shivering air.
Zep. Spirit of Fire! away! away!
Or your very roundelay
Will sear my plumage newly budded
From its quilled sheath, all studded
With the self-same dews that fell
On the May-grown Asphodel.
Spirit of Fire-away! away!
Bre. Spirit of Fire-away! away
Zephyr, blue-eyed fairy, turn,
And see my cool sedge-buried urn,
Where it rests its mossy brim
'Mid water-mint and cresses dim;
And the flowers, in sweet troubles,
Lift their eyes above the bubbles,
Like our Queen, when she would please
To sleep and Oberon will tease-
Love me, blue-eyed Fairy! true.
Soothly I am sick for you.
Zep. Gentle Breama! by the first
Violet young nature nurst,
I will bathe myself with thee,
So you sometimes follow me
To my home, far, far in west,
Beyond the nimble-wheeled quest
Of the golden-browed sun.
Come with me, o'er tops of trees,
To my fragrant palaces,
Where they ever floating are
Beneath the cherish of a star
Call'd Vesper, who with silver veil
Ever hides his brilliance pale,
Ever gently-drows'd doth keep
Twilight for the Fayes to sleep.
Fear not that your watery hair
Will thirst in drouthy ringlets there:
Clouds of stored summer rains
Thou shalt taste, before the stains
Of the mountain soil they take,
And too unlucent for thee make.
I love thee, crystal Fairy, true!
Sooth I am as sick for you!
Sal. Out, ye aguish Fairies, out!
Chilly lovers, what a rout
Keep ye with your frozen breath,
Colder than the mortal death!
Adder-eyed Dusketha, speak!
Shall we leave these, and go seek
In the earth's wide entrails old
Couches warm as theirs are cold?
O for a fiery gloom and thee,
Dusketha, so enchantingly
Freckle-wing'd and lizard-sided!
Dus. By thee, Sprite, will I be guided!
I care not for cold or heat;
Frost and flame, or sparks, or sleet,
To my essence are the same;—
But I honour more the flame.
Sprite of Fire, I follow thee
Wheresoever it may be,-
To the torrid spouts and fountains,
Underneath earth-quaked mountains;
Or, at thy supreme desire,
Touch the very pulse of fire
With my bare unlidded eyes.
Sal. Sweet Dusketha! paradise!
Off, ye icy Spirits, fly!
Frosty creatures of the sky!
Dus. Breathe upon them, fiery sprite!
Away! away to our delight!
Sal. Go, feed on icicles, while we
Bedded in tongue-flames will be.
Dus. Lead me to those feverous glooms, Sprite of Fire!
Blue-eyed Zephyr, of those flowers
Far in the west where the May-cloud lowers;
And the beams of still Vesper, when winds are all
Are shed through the rain and the milder mist, And twilight your floating bowers.
! WERE I one of the Olympian twelve
Their godships should pass this into a
law,-
That when a man doth set himself in toil
After some beauty veiled far away,
Each step he took should make his lady's hand
More soft, more white, and her fair cheek more fair.
And for each briar-berry he might eat
A kiss should bud upon the tree of love,
And pulp and ripen richer every hour,
To melt away upon the traveller's lips.
The sun, with his great eye,
Sees not so much as I;
And the moon, all silver, proud,
Might as well be in a cloud.
And O the spring-the spring!
I lead the life of a king!
Couch'd in the teeming grass,
I spy each pretty lass.
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