When some tiara bright
About your head is bound
And like a goddess crowned
Your beauty dazzles sight,
My soul with rapture swift does thrill
And knows itself your captive still.

When loose your tresses lie
And o'er them softly drawn
A neckerchief of lawn
Protects them from men's eyes,
While all in vain my gaze I turn,
My thoughts with longing madly burn.

But when those locks revealed
Send down their stream of gold
And in my hand I hold
Their splendour unconcealed,
No more I feel my heart my own,

Assembled at thy high command,
Before thy face, Great King! we stand;
The voice that marshall'd ev'ry star,
Has call'd thy people from afar.

First bow our hearts beneath thy sway,
Then, give thy growing empire way,
O'er wastes of sin — o'er fields of blood,
Till, like the rose, the desert bud.

Our pray'rs assist, accept our praise,
Our hopes revive, our courage raise,
Our counsels aid, and oh! impart
The single eye — the faithful heart.

To L. A. T.

What curled and scented sun-girls, almond-eyed,
 With lotos-blossoms in their hands and hair,
 Have made their swarthy lovers call them fair,
With these spent strings, when brutes were deified,
And Memnon in the sunrise sprang and cried,
 And love-winds smote Bubastis, and the bare
 Black breasts of carven Pasht received the prayer
Of suppliants bearing gifts from far and wide!
This lute has out-sung Egypt; all the lives
 Of violent passion, and the vast calm art

I.

We cannot estimate the worth of things
That once seemed small. The value of a rose
With red-lipped beauty and with fragrant wings,
One spirit, the spirit that watched it fading, knows

II.

We cannot tell what rapture we may miss
Who lightly lose what once was nobly won
God's heart was given in some dead woman's kiss.
One tiny shipwrecked star may wreck the sun

III.

The child can live without the poet's heart

And sky and earth revealed themselves to sight:
the grey earth gasping in the quivering light;
the sky o'ershadowed, tragic and undone:
amid the mute commotion, gleaming white,
a house shone forth and in a flash was gone;
like to an eye, stretched wide in direful fright,
that swiftly oped and shut in the inky night.

INHALES-OWEN CHURCHYARD, ON MISS ANNE POWEL .

Here, here she lies, a budding rose,
Blasted before its bloom,
Whose innocence did sweets disclose
Beyond that flower's perfume.
To those who for her death are grieved,
This consolation's given;
She's from the storms of life relieved
To shine more bright in heaven.

I know: the valley sound I heard erstwhile
was not the pacing steed of mounted knight:
it was the rain, that beat in furious might
against the gutter, from the dripping tile.

But on and on along the bank, where laves
the stream, I saw the knights of chivalry pass;
I saw the shining brightness of cuirass,
I saw the shadow gallop o'er the waves.

When then the wind had ceased, I heard no more
the sound of galloping, no longer quaked
at flights remote, seen in the dubious gleam;

but you I saw, my poplars, friends of yore!

" To Venus, Venus here retired,
My sober vows I pay:
Not her on Paphian plains admired,
The bold, the pert, the gay.

" Not her whose amorous leer prevail'd
To bribe the Phrygian boy;
Not her who, clad in armour, fail'd
To save disastrous Troy.

" Fresh rising from the foamy tide,
She every bosom warms;
While half withdrawn she seems to hide,
And half reveals, her charms.

" Learn hence, ye boastful sons of taste,
Who plan the rural shade;
Learn hence to shun the vicious waste
Of pomp, at large display'd.

AT THE BOTTOM OF A LARGE ROOT, ON THE SIDE OF A SLOPE .

O let me haunt this peaceful shade;
Nor let Ambition e'er invade
The tenants of this leafy bower,
That shun her paths, and slight her power!

Hither the peaceful Halcyon flies
From social meads and open skies;
Pleased by this rill her course to steer,
And hide her sapphire plumage here.

The trout, bedropt with crimson stains,
Forsakes the river's proud domains;
Forsakes the sun's unwelcome gleam,
To lurk within this humble stream.

And sure I hear the Naiad say,

I saw the lovers. Held in passion's chain
They kissed and clipped, then clipped and kissed again,
If thus they might their endless thirst abate
And dull the torment of their parted state.
Fain were they in each other's heart to hide
And so at last a change of raiment tried.

He, as Achilles once on Scyros shore,
A maiden's smock upon his body wore;
She, like Diana kilted to the knee,
Strode boldly forth in manly tunic free.
But soon their lips once more together pressed,
Unquenched the craving of their love confessed.