O soft, caressing sound, more sweet than scent Of violets in woody hollows! Tone As amorous as the ring-dove’s tender moan Beneath the spreading forest’s leafy tent; What mystery of earth or air hath lent Thee that bewitching music, where the drone Of Summer bees in dewy buds new blown With trembling, fainting melody is blent? What master did conceive thee, as the sound Most fit to woo his lady from her rest, What wakeful maiden in thy wooing found The passion of her lover first exprest, And from her silken pillows, beauty-crowned, Stept forth and smiled on him who loved her best? November 10th, 1875. [Decorative image unavailable.] [Decorative image unavailable.] II. VESPERS.It is the vesper hour, and in yon aisle Where fainting incense clouds the heavy air My lady’s kneeling at her evening prayer, Alone and silently; for in a file The choristers have passed, and left her there, Where martyrs from the tinted windows stare, And saints look downward with a holy smile Upon her meek devotions, while the day Fades slowly, and a tender amber light From coloured panes about her head doth play— Her veil falls like a shade, and ghostly white Her clasped hands glimmer through the deepening gray; So will she kneel, until from Heaven’s height The Angels bend to hear their sister pray. November 11th, 1875. [Decorative image unavailable.] [Decorative image unavailable.] III. BETTINE TO GOETHE.“Be friendly, pray, with these fancies of mine.” Bettine. Could youth discrown thy head of its gray hair, I could not love it as I love it now; Could one grand line be smoothed from thy brow, ’Twould seem to me less stately and less fair. O no, be as thou art! For thou dost wear The signs of noble age that cannot bow Thine intellect like thy form, and I who know How each year that did visibly impair Thy first fresh youth, left inwardly such grand And gracious gifts, would rather have thee so— Believe me, master, who erect doth stand In soul and purpose, age cannot lay low Till he receive, new from the Father’s hand The youth he did but outwardly forego. April, 1876. [Decorative image unavailable.] |
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