The next lady that he invokes before the astonished youth is his own daughter—sweet Dora—the previous one was Miss Southey.
“Come, if the notes thine ear may pierce,
Come, youngest of the lovely three,
Submissive to the mighty verse
And the dear voice of harmony,
By none more deeply felt than thee!
I sang; and lo! from pastures virginal
She hastens to the haunts
Of Nature, and the lonely elements.
Air sparkles round her with a dazzling sheen;
And mark, her glowing cheek, her vesture green!
And, as if wishful to disarm
Or to repay the potent charm,
She bears the stringed lute of old romance,
That cheered the trellissed arbour’s privacy,
And soothed war-wearied knights in raftered hall.
How vivid, yet how delicate, her glee!
So tripped the muse, inventress of the dance;
So, truant in waste woods, the blithe Euphrosyne!”
But the ringlets of that head,
Why are they ungarlanded?
Why bedeck her temples less
Than the simplest shepherdess?
Is it not a brow inviting
Choicest flowers that ever breathed,
Which the myrtle would delight in,
With Idalian rose enwreathed?
But her humility is well content
With one wild floweret (call it not forlorn),—
Flower of the Winds—beneath her bosom worn—
Yet more for love than ornament.”
Then follows that beautiful description of her moral graces, already quoted in these pages, beginning—
“Open ye thickets! let her fly,
Swift as a Thracian nymph, o’er field and height;”
the whole picture being as fine a conception, and as rich an embodyment, of this sweet Dora,—judging from her portrait in the second volume of the “Memoirs,” and from numerous written and spoken reports of her person and character,—as the highest genius and the highest art combined, could possibly have produced. And now for Miss Coleridge:—
“Last of the three, tho’ eldest born,
Reveal thyself, like pensive morn
Touched by the skylark’s earliest note,
E’er humble-gladness be afloat.
But whether in the semblance drest
Of dawn, or eve, fair vision of the west,
Come, with each anxious hope subdued
By woman’s gentle fortitude,
Each grief, thro’ meekness, settling into rest.
—Or I would hail thee when some high-wrought page
Of a closed volume, lingering in thine hand,
Has raised thy spirit to a peaceful stand
Among the glories of a happy age.”
And, behold! she is here:—
“Her brow hath opened on me—see it there,
Brightening the umbrage of her hair;
So gleams the crescent moon, that loves
To be descried thro’ shady groves.
Tenderest bloom is on her cheek;
Wish not for a richer streak;
Nor dread the depth of meditative eye;
But let thy love, upon that azure field
Of thoughtfulness and beauty, yield
Its homage offered up in purity.
What would’st thou more? In sunny glade,
Or under leaves of thickest shade,
Was such a stillness e’er diffused
Since earth grew calm while angels mused?
Softly she treads, as if her foot were loth
To crush the mountain dew-drop—soon to melt,
On the flower’s breast; as if she felt
That flowers themselves, whate’er their hue,
With all their fragrance, all their glistening,
Call to the heart for inward listening—
And tho’ for bridal wreaths and tokens true
Welcomed wisely; tho’ a growth
Which the careless shepherd sleeps on,
As fitly spring from turf the mourner weeps on—
And without wrong are cropped the marble tomb to strew.
And now the charm is over;