All soft tints of flowers most vernal,
Tints that make each other fade:
In her eyes they are eternal,
Set in some mysterious shade.
Full of dreams are the abysses
Of the night beneath her hair;
But an open dawn of kisses
Is her mouth: O she is fair.
And she has so sweet a fashion
With her languid loving eyes,
That she stirs my soul with passion,
And renews my breath with sighs.
Now she twines her hair in tresses
With some long red lustrous vine;
Now she weaves strange glossy dresses
From the leafy fabrics fine:
And upon her neck there mingle
Corals and quaint serpent charms,
And bright beaded sea-shells jingle
Set in circlets round her arms.
There—in solitudes sweet smelling,
Where the mighty Banyan stands,
I and she have found a dwelling
Shadowed by its giant hands:
All around our banyan bowers
Shine the reddening palm-tree ranks,
And the wild rare forest flowers
Crowded on high purple banks.
Through the long enchanted weather
—Ere the swollen fruits yet fall,
While red love-birds sit together
In thick green, and voices call
From the hidden forest places,
And are answered with strange shout
By the folk whose myriad faces
All day long are peeping out
From shy loopholes all above us
In the leafy hollows green,
—While all creatures seem to love us,
And the lofty boughs are seen