BRIGHT fleet slow shadow! puzzling guide, Smile not so fatal-strange, nor glide Magnetically on and on; Am I but your automaton? O ghostly cruel pride! From this fine orchard, branches sprawl And bigarreaus and blackhearts fall; Your violet eye has bid me clutch Those cherries, and before I touch They're dew, and soft you call. The ivied covert is so sweet That garlands you from gascon heat, And yet your lip interprets not That I dare love the hermit grot, The faded counterfeit! False cry; for well I saw the wood, And on hurt brows put its cold hood, And would have rested on the moss To watch the moth and moonbeam cross The path where you had stood. But now you were, and I was, thence In rosy dawn's magnificence, While a young girl, that did not speak, Stared long; the roses of her cheek Beside the wild-rose fence! She was, she is not; you are here, Moves your strange smile to chill or cheer? It subtly stirs, or seems, and yet Read day by day 'tis firmly set, Stirs, stirs not year on year. The old house with its deep green glass Looks, sheds tranquillity; airy grass Sunlit by basking chimney sways, The baby on the threshold plays. I gaze, tremble and pass. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE PITY OF IT by THOMAS HARDY EVENING by ISABELLA LOCKHART ALDERMAN A WATER MILL by ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE by WILLIAM ROSE BENET MOUNT RUSHMORE by CHARLOTTE LOUISE BERTLESEN A DREAM by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT A ROUND by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) THE SHEPHERD'S PIPE: SIXTH ECLOGUE by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) THE SHEPHERD'S PIPE: THIRD ECLOGUE by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) |