English

Who sprinkled the kohl of enchantment upon her eyes
And gathered the bloom of the rose from her cheeks, fruitwise?
And who was it let down the curtained night of her hair
And through its gloom made the light of her forehead rise?

Some to extinguish, others to prevent,
A mad devotion to one dangerous fair,
Court all they meet; in hopes to dissipate
The cares of love amongst an hundred brides.
The event is doubtful: for there are who find
A cure in this; there are who find it not.
'Tis no relief, alas! it rather galls
The wound, to those who are sincerely sick.
For while from feverish and tumultuous joys
The nerves grow languid and the soul subsides,
The tender fancy smarts with every sting,
And what was love before is madness now.

Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach
Parched Mauritania, or the sultry West,
Or the wide flood that laves rich Indostan,
Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave
Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free
The evaporation through the softened skin
May bear proportion to the swelling blood.
So may they 'scape the fever's rapid flames;
So feel untainted the hot breath of hell.
With us, the man of no complaint demands
The warm ablution just enough to clear
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep

By music's pow'r, sweet Amphion model'd rocks,
And by it, Orpheus led the bleating flocks;
One rais'd a city by his sounding lyre;
The other quell'd the raging lion's ire.
Here sounds more charming strike the ravish'd ear,
That stop e'en Eacchus in his wild career.
Hail! beauteous child, which shall we most admire,
Thy voice harmonious, or thy tuneful lyre?
If at this age you thus insnare the heart,
What will thy charms! when nature plays her part?

Do not unjustly blame
My guiltless breast,
For venturing to disclose a flame
It had so long supprest.

In its own ashes it design'd
For ever to have lain;
But that my sighs, like blasts of wind,
Made it break out again.

How cool and sweet, O breeze of morn,
Thou stirrest in the air,
Caressing soft the dewy flowers,
The young girl's clustering hair!
But not my country's breeze thou art.
Blow past! thou canst not touch my heart.

How sweetly and how soulfully
Thou singest from the grove,
O bird, while men admire thy voice
In tender hours of love!
But not my country's bird thou art.
Sing elsewhere! Deaf to thee my heart.

With what a gentle murmur,
O brook, thy current flows,
Reflecting in its mirror clear

That wooden cross beside the road
Marks—as the now-blurred legend showed—
That there a ‘soldat anglais’ dead
Has found betimes his foreign bed—
His last impregnable abode.

'Tis no uncommon episode,
You say, of war's barbaric code,
For which so many men have bled—
That wooden cross!

Nay, but this blood was well bestowed;
'Twas shed for nations 'neath the load
Of mailed oppression fury-fed,
And ruthless rapine, sore bestead.
Surely it needs no funeral ode—
That wooden cross!

All-ADOR'D , all glorious Aphrodita,
Heavn's goddess mysterious, I beseech thee
With thy anguish and terror overwhelm not
My spirit, O queen:

But hither come thou, as, if e'er, aforetime
Thou to my crying from afar attentive
Harkenedst, an' out o' the golden archways
Unto me camest,

Harnessing thy fair flutterers, that earthward
Swiftly drew thee down to the dusky mountains,
Multitudinously winging from unseen
Heights o' the wide air,

And arrivèd, thrice-blessed, I beheld thee

O hold no more the prize of wealth before me,
Nor hope of praise;
Nor talk of things men toil for, to deplore me
My dream-filled days!

Give me a fastness distant from the city,
The human sea
Which I would hate, were not I forced to pity,
Because akin to me.

There in the wilds with only you to love me
And none to hate,
I could feel Something good and strong above me,
More kind than Fate.

The Wind would take my hand and lead me kindly
Through the wild;
And teach me to believe in beauty blindly,

shaking sand off
his bristly hair, a sumo wrestler
who's lost the match