Classic Poem

A Dialogue.

I.

Tell me, Eutresia, since my fate,
And thy more powerful form, decrees
My heart an immolation at thy shrine,
Where it is ever to incline,
How I must love, and at what rate;
And by what steps, and what degrees,
I shall my hopes enlarge, or my desires confine.

[She replies.]

First, when thy flames begin,
See they burn all within;
And so, as lookers-on may not descry
Smoke in a sigh, or sparkle in an eye.
I'd have thy love a good while there,
Ere thine own heart should be aware:
And I myself would choose to know it,
First by thy care and cunning not to show it.

[He pleads.]

When my flame, thine own way, is thus betray'd,
Must it be still afraid?
May it not be sharp-sighted too, as well,
And know thou know'st, that which it dares not tell?
And, by that knowledge, find it may
Tell itself o'er, a louder way?

II.

[Her truce.]

Let me alone, a while!
For so thou mayest beguile
My heart to a consent,
Long ere it meant.
For while I dare not disapprove,
Lest that betray a knowledge of thy love,
I shall be so accustom'd to allow,
That I shall not know how
To be displeased, when thou shalt it avow.

III.

[He argues.]

When by Love's powerful secret sympathy
Our souls are got thus nigh,
And that, by one another seen,
There needs no breath to go between;
Though in the main agreement of our breasts,
Our hearts subscribe as interests,
Will it not need
The tongues' sign too, as witness to the deed?

[She yields.]

Speak, then! but when you whisper out the tale
Of what you ail,
Let it be so disorder'd that I may
Guess only thence what you would say:
Then to be able to speak sense
Were an offence:
And 'twill thy passion tell the subtlest way,
Not to know what to say!