The haunted night, that felt
The rapture so accursed,
Shook, loosening one green star that spun
Wild down the dusk and burst.
Fair was her face as Sin's;
"Ah, wretch!" she wailed, "to know
A wormy seat at Death's lean feet
May not undo such woe!
"The devil-wrangling pit
Much dearer than God's deeps
Of serious skies, where thought ne'er dies
And memory never sleeps!
"And dearer far than both,
Than Heaven or Hell, the jest,
The godless lot to rot and rot,
And not be cursed or blessed!"
THE SPRING.
"O Fons Bandusiæ!"
Push back the brambles, berry-blue,
The hollowed spring is full in view;
Deep tangled with luxuriant fern
Its rock-imbedded crystal urn.
Not for the loneliness that keeps
The coigne wherein its silence sleeps;
Not for wild butterflies that sway
Their pansy pinions all the day
Above its mirror; nor the bee,
Nor dragon-fly which passing see
Themselves reflected in its spar;
Not for the one white, liquid star
That twinkles in its firmament,
Nor moon-shot clouds so slowly sent
Athwart it when the kindly night
Beads all its grasses with the light,
Small jewels of the dimpled dew;
Not for the day's reflected blue,
Nor the quaint, dainty colored stones
That dance within it where it moans;
Not for all these I love to sit
In silence and to gaze in it.
But, know, a nymph with merry eyes
Meets mine within its laughing skies;
A graceful, naked nymph who plays
All the long fragrant summer days
With instant sight of bees and birds,
And speaks with them in water-words.
One for whose nakedness the air
Weaves moony mists, and on whose hair,
Unfilleted, the night will set
That lone star as a coronet.