Fathomless dusk by night, the day lets in
Glimmer of emerald,—thus those eyes of hers!
Above the firm sweep of the moulded chin
The lips, than whose least kiss Heaven's gifts were worse.
Her bosom,—ah that now my head were laid!
Warm in that resting-place! But, heart, be still!
I will refrain, and break my dreams, afraid
To stir the yearning I can not fulfil.
Love, in the northern night of Brittany
Hear you no voice divide the night like flame?
In these gray walls the inmost soul of me
Is swooning with the music of your name.
NOCTURNE.
Soothe, soothe
The day-fall, soothe,
Till wrinkling winds and seas are smooth,—
Till yon low band
Of charméd strand
Puff seaward dreams from the inner land,—
Till, lapped in mild half-lights, our dream-blown boat
Is felt to float, to fall, to float.
A sundown rose
Delays and glows
O'er yon spired peak's remoter snows.
Uprolling soon
A red-ripe moon
Lolls in the pines in drowsed half-swoon;
And thin moon-shades pace out to us, and shift
Our visions as we drift, and drift.
From night-wide blooms
In coppice glooms
Set outward voyaging spice perfumes.
The slow-pulsed seas,
The shadowed trees,—
The night-spell holds us one with these,
Till, Love, we scarce know life from sleep,—we seem
To smile a little, dream, and dream.
TIDES.
Through the still dusk how sighs the ebb-tide out,
Reluctant for the reed-beds! Down the sands
It washes. Hark! Beyond the wan gray strand's
Low limits how the winding channels grieve,
Aware the evasive waters soon will leave
Them void amid the waste of desolate lands,
Where shadowless to the sky the marsh expands,
And the noon-heats must scar them, and the drought.
Yet soon for them the solacing tide returns
To quench their thirst of longing. Ah, not so
Works the stern law oar tides of life obey!
Ebbing in the night-watches swift away,
Scarce known ere fled forever is the flow;
And in parched channel still the shrunk stream mourns.