This of gloom and that of mirth
In their mystic numbers tell;
But thoughts of sweeter birth
Teacheth the nightingale.
Pine.... Pity.
Naught is there under Heaven’s wide hollowness
That moves more dear compassion of the mind
Than beauty brought to unworthy wretchedness
Through envy’s snares, or fortune’s freaks unkind:
I, whether lately through her brightness blind,
Or through allegiance and vast fealty,
Which I do owe unto all womankind,
Feel my heart pierced with so great agony,
When such I see, that all for pity I could die.
Spenser.
Like Ariadne, when in pale despair
The Athenian left her,—so sad Eva pined,
And so she went complaining to the air,
And gave her tresses to the careless wind:—
The colour of her fate was on her mind,
Dark, death-like, and despairing;—and her eye
Shone lustrous, like the light of prophecy.
Over the grassy meads,—beside lone streams,
To perilous heights which no weak step could reach,
She wandered, feeding her unearthly dreams
With musing, and would move the tremulous beech
And shuddering aspen with imploring speech;
For nothing that did live, save they (who sighed)
Pitied the downfall of her amorous pride.
Barry Cornwall.
