As Cupid , from his Cruel Sport,
Return'd, to Grace his Mother's Court,
In Triumph leading Bleeding Hearts,
Throbbing with Love, transfix'd with Darts;
Himself untouch'd! the Hunter stray'd
Into a Cooling, Myrtle Shade,
And saw a Lonely, Lovely Maid.

No sooner did young Master spy
The Virgin's soft, refulgent Eye,
Than did his Opening Breast receive
A Wound, like Those, He, often, gave;
And, down his Arms and Hearts He threw,
And languishing, full, in her View,
'Tis done! He said, See! Mars , see! Jove ,

I saw, I saw the lovely child,
I watched her by the way,
I learnt her gestures sweet and wild,
Her loving eyes and gay.

Her name? — I heard not, nay, nor care, —
Enough it was for me
To find her innocently fair
And delicately free.

Oh cease and go ere dreams be done,
Nor trace the angel's birth,
Nor find the Paradisal one
A blossom of the earth!

Thus is it with our subtlest joys, —
How quick the soul's alarm!
How lightly deed or word destroys
That evanescent charm!

My sweet girl is lying still
In her lovely atmosphere,
The gentle hopes her blue veins fill
With pure silver, warm and clear.

O, see her hair, O, mark her breast,
Would it not, O! comfort thee,
If thou could'st nightly go to rest
By that virgin chastity.

Dearest, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.

The very flowers that bend and meet,
In sweetening others, grow more sweet;
The clouds by day, the stars by night,
Inweave their floating locks of light;
The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid,
Is but the embrace of sun and shade.

How few that love us have we found!
How wide the world that girds them round!

1.

Ah, the symmetry how dainty
Of the limbs uprearing slender!
On the little neck, how charming
Of the lovely head the poise is!

Half alluring, half pathetic
Is the face, whereon the glances
Of a woman mingle warmly
With a child's unsullied laughter.

Were there not upon thy shoulders
Here and there, like sombre shadows,
Of the dust of earth some traces,
I should liken thee to Venus —

To the goddess Aphrodite,
Rising lovely from the ocean,
Sweetly blooming, fair and shining,
And, I need not mention, clean.

I

From his far isle the gentle stranger came
Who taught our lips to love his liquid name,
Found a new home beneath our western sky
Won all our hearts and left us but to die.

I can remember well
My very early youth,
My sumptuous Isabel,
Who was a girl of truth;
Of golden truth; — we do not often see
Those whose whole lives have only known to be.

So sunlight, very warm,
On harvest fields and trees,
Could not more sweetly form
Rejoicing melodies
For these deep things, than Isabel for me;
I lay beneath her soul as a lit tree.

With a spreading and spreading
(Like that) of the clouds that sit at morning
On the moor of Kasuga, —
I increase in my love
In the lapse of months and days.

Doubtlesse Christ onely loved man the most,
Entring into the world, (though he might boast
Rightly indeede to be the Sonne of God,
Man to deliver from Gods smarting Rod,
On him he rooke, such was his love to man ,
Not in arerages wherein he had ran,
Duely to pay the debts which he did owe,
Expressing plainly that he lov'd man so.

O that our love with zeale to Christ might burne,

Mourne we'de for Christ as he for us did mournt ,
A low, A low, Oh hone for us he cry'd,
Labouring with love when he did earst abide,

I

For whom is Beauty? Where no eyes attend
As richly goes the day; and every dawn
Reddens along green rivers whereupon
None ever gaze. Think, could earth see an end
Of all the twilight lovers whose thoughts blend
With scents of garden blooms they call their own,
Would not as close the yellowest rose outblown
Be, after them, the unmurmurous evening's friend?
Then wherefore Beauty, if in mortal eye