* * * * *
While thus, like motes that dance away
Existence in a summer ray,
These gay things, born but to quadrille,
The circle of their doom fulfil—
(That dancing doom whose law decrees
That they should live on the alert toe
A life of ups-and-downs, like keys
Of Broadwood's in a long concerto:—)
While thus the fiddle's spell, within,
Calls up its realm of restless sprites.
Without, as if some Mandarin
Were holding there his Feast of Lights,
Lamps of all hues, from walks and bowers,
Broke on the eye, like kindling flowers,
Till, budding into light, each tree
Bore its full fruit of brilliancy.
Here shone a garden-lamps all o'er,
As tho' the Spirits of the Air
Had taken it in their heads to pour
A shower of summer meteors there;—
While here a lighted shrubbery led
To a small lake that sleeping lay,
Cradled in foliage but, o'er-head,
Open to heaven's sweet breath and ray;
While round its rim there burning stood
Lamps, with young flowers beside them bedded,
That shrunk from such warm neighborhood,
And, looking bashful in the flood,
Blushed to behold themselves so wedded.
Hither, to this embowered retreat,
Fit but for nights so still and sweet;
Nights, such as Eden's calm recall
In its first lonely hour, when all
So silent is, below, on high,
That is a star falls down the sky,
You almost think you hear it fall—
Hither, to this recess, a few,
To shun the dancers' wildering noise,
And give an hour, ere night-time flew,
To music's more ethereal joys,
Came with their voices-ready all
As Echo waiting for a call—
In hymn or ballad, dirge or glee,
To weave their mingling ministrelsy,
And first a dark-eyed nymph, arrayed—
Like her whom Art hath deathless made,
Bright Mona Lisa[4]—with that braid
Of hair across the brow, and one
Small gem that in the centre shone—
With face, too, in its form resembling
Da Vinci's Beauties-the dark eyes,
Now lucid as thro' crystal trembling,
Now soft as if suffused with sighs—
Her lute that hung beside her took,
And, bending o'er it with shy look,
More beautiful, in shadow thus,
Than when with life most luminous,
Past her light finger o'er the chords,
And sung to them these mournful words:—
SONG.
Bring hither, bring thy lute, while day is dying—
Here will I lay me and list to thy song;
Should tones of other days mix with its sighing,
Tones of a light heart, now banisht so long,
Chase them away-they bring but pain,
And let thy theme be woe again.
Sing on thou mournful lute—day is fast going,
Soon will its light from thy chords die away;
One little gleam in the west is still glowing,
When that hath vanisht, farewell to thy lay.
Mark, how it fades!-see, it is fled!
Now, sweet lute, be thou, too, dead.
The group that late in garb of Greeks
Sung their light chorus o'er the tide—
Forms, such as up the wooded creeks
Of Helle's shore at noon-day glide,
Or nightly on her glistening sea,
Woo the bright waves with melody—
Now linked their triple league again
Of voices sweet, and sung a strain,
Such as, had Sappho's tuneful ear
But caught it, on the fatal steep,
She would have paused, entranced, to hear,
And for that day deferred her leap.
SONG AND TRIO.
On one of those sweet nights that oft
Their lustre o'er the AEgean fling,
Beneath my casement, low and soft,
I heard a Lesbian lover sing;
And, listening both with ear and thought,
These sounds upon the night breeze caught—
"Oh, happy as the gods is he,
"Who gazes at this hour on thee!"