I ask no bawble miniature, Nor ringlets dead

Shorn from her comely head,

Now that morning not disdains
Mountains and the misty plains
Her colossal portraiture;

They her heralds be,

Steeped in her quality,

And singers of her fame

Who is their Muse and dame.

'Higher, dear swallows! mind not what I say.

Ah! heedless how the weak are strong,

Say, was it just,

In thee to frame, in me to trust,

Thou to the Syrian couldst belong?

I am of a lineage

That each for each doth fast engage;
In old Bassora's schools, I seemed
Hermit vowed to books and gloom,-

Ill-bested for gay bridegroom.
I was by thy touch redeemed;

When thy meteor glances came,

We talked at large of worldly fate,
And drew truly every trait.

Once I dwelt apart,

Now I live with all;

As shepherd's lamp on far hill-side
Seems, by the traveller espied,

A door into the mountain heart,
So didst thou quarry and unlock
Highways for me through the rock.

Now, deceived, thou wanderest
In strange lands unblest;

And my kindred come to soothe me.
Southwind is my next of blood;

He is come through fragrant wood,
Drugged with spice from climates warm,
And in every twinkling glade,

And twilight nook,

Unveils thy form.

Out of the forest way

Forth paced it yesterday;

And when I sat by the watercourse, Watching the daylight fade,

It throbbed up from the brook.

'River, and rose, and crag, and bird,

Frost, and sun, and eldest night,

To me their aid preferred,

To me their comfort plight;

"Courage! we are thine allies,

And with this hint be wise,

The chains of kind

The distant bind;

Deed thou doest she must do,

Above her will, be true;

And, in her strict resort

To winds and waterfalls,

And autumn's sunlit festivals,

To music, and to music's thought,

Inextricably bound,

She shall find thee, and be found.

Follow not her flying feet;

Come to us herself to meet."

INITIAL, DÆMONIC, AND

CELESTIAL LOVE.

I.

THE INITIAL LOVE.

VENUS, when her son was lost,

Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,

And told the truant by his marks,
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
This befell long ago.

Time and tide are strangely changed,
Men and manners much deranged:
None will now find Cupid latent
By this foolish antique patent.
He came late along the waste,
Shod like a traveller for haste;