Once, I think, a finer fire
Touched my lips, and then I sang
Half the songs of my desire:
With their splendour the world rang.
And their sweetness made me free
Of those starry ways whereby
Planets make their minstrelsy
In echoing, unending sky.
So, before that spell was broken,
Song of the wind, surge of the sea,--
Beautiful passionate things unspoken
Rose like a breaking wave in me:
Rose like a wave with curled crest
That green sunlight splinters through...
But the wave broke within my breast:
And now I am a man like you.
THE LEMON-TREE
Last night, last night, a vision of you
Sweetly troubled my waking dream:
Beneath the clear Algerian blue
You stood with lifted eyes: the beam
Of a winter sun beat on the crown
Of a lemon-tree, whose delicate fruit
Like pale lamps hung airily down;
And in your gazing eyes a mute
And lovely wonder.... Have I sung
Of slender things and naught beside?
You were so beautifully young
I must have kissed you or have died.
PHTHONOS
If, in high jealousy, God made me blind
And laughed to see me stumble in the night,
Driving his many-splintered arrows of light
Into that lost dominion of my mind;
Then, knowing me still unvext and unresigned,
Stole from my ears all homely sounds that might