Therefore I look not on thy grave,
Though there the rose is sweet;
But rather hear the loud wave wash
These wastes about my feet.
Stephen Phillips.
PRINCE OF PAINTERS, COME, I PRAY.
PRINCE of painters, come, I pray,
Paint my love, for, though away,
King of craftsmen, you can well
Paint what I to thee can tell.
First her hair you must indite
Dark, but soft as summer night;
Hast thou no contrivance whence
To make it breathe its frankincense?
Rising from her rounded cheek
Let thy pencil duly speak,
How below that purpling night
Glows her forehead ivory-white.
Mind you neither part nor join
Those sweet eyebrows’ easy line;
They must merge, you know, to be
In separated unity.
Painter draw, as lover bids,
Now the dark line of the lids;
Painter, now ’tis my desire,
Make her glance from very fire,
Make it as Athene’s blue,
Like Cythera’s liquid too;
Now to give her cheeks and nose,
Milk must mingle with the rose;
Her lips be like persuasion’s made,
To call for kisses they persuade;
And for her delicious chin,
O’er and under and within,
And round her soft neck’s Parian wall,
Bid fly the graces, one and all.
For the rest, enrobe my pet
In her faint clear violet;
But a little truth must show
There is more that lies below,
Hold! thou hast her—that is she.
Hush! she ’s going to speak to me.
William Philpot.
A LAGOON MESSAGE.
NOT now, but later, when the road
We tread together breaks apart,
When thou, my dearest, distant art,
And tedious days have swelled the load
Upon my heart.
Or haply after that, when I
Am sealed within an earthy bed,
Resting and unrememberèd,
This scene will speak and easily
The whole be said.
Some eve, when from his burning chair
The sun below Fusina slips,
And all the sable poplar tips
Wave in the warm vermilion air,
The wind, the lips
Of the soft breeze with wayward touch
Shall tell thee all I longed to own;
And thou, on lurid lakes alone,
Wilt say: “Poor soul, he loved me much;
And he is gone.”
Percy C. Pinkerton.