474 WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, O SEA With husky-haughty lips, O sea! Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat shore, Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the sparkling dimples of the sun, Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; Great as thou art above the rest, thy many tears-a lack from all eternity in thy content (Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, defeats, could make thee greatest no less could make thee); Thy lonely state-something thou ever seek'st and seek'st, yet never gain'st, Surely some right withheld-some voice, in huge monotonous rage, of Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and chafing in those breakers; And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and waves, And serpent hiss, and savage peals of laughter, And undertones of distant lion roar (Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear-but now, rapport for once, A phantom in the night thy confidant for once), The first and last confession of the globe, Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's abysms, Thou tellest to a kindred soul. 1884. GOOD-BYE, MY FANCY Good-bye, my Fancy! Farewell, dear mate, dear love! I'm going away, I know not where, Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever see you again, Now for my last-let me look back a moment; 5 ΤΟ 15 20 5 Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd together; Delightful!-now separation-Good-bye, my Fancy. Yet let me not be too hasty: Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, become really blended into one; Then if we die we die together (yes, we 'll remain one), If we go anywhere we 'll go together to meet what happens, May-be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs (who May-be it is you the mortal knob really undoing, turning-so now finally, Good-bye and hail! my Fancy. 1891. RICHARD HENRY STODDARD LEONATUS The fair boy Leonatus, It was his duty evermore To tend the Lady Imogen; By peep of day he might be seen To wake the sleepy waiting-maid, (With pearlèd rosaries used of yore), ΤΟ 15 5 10 And dragged him down the vaults, where wine To pick a flask of vintage fine; The neat scribe Leonatus, She wondered that he did not speak And she bethought her of a freak To test the lad: she bade him write 100 105 A letter that a maiden might, A billet to her heart's delight; Unknowing what he did, and wrote, The happy Leonatus, The page of Imogen. The page of Imogen no more, But now her love, her lord, her life, As both had hoped and dreamed before. Uplooking in her face the while, That answered in a dreamy bliss The joyful Leonatus, The Lord of Imogen. THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS See, from this counterfeit of him 1852. |