EPILOGUE.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And, if you find a meaning there, O whisper to your glass, and say, "What wonder, if he thinks me fair?"

What wonder I was all unwise,

To shape the song for your delight,

Like long-tailed birds of Paradise,

That float through Heaven, and cannot light?

Or old-world trains, upheld at court
By Cupid-boys of blooming hue-
But take it earnest wed with sport,
And either sacred unto you.

Nor finds a closer truth than this

All-graceful head, so richly curled, And evermore a costly kiss,

The prelude to some brighter world.

For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,

And every bird of Eden burst

In carol, every bud to flower,

What eyes, like thine, have wakened hopes?
What lips, like thine, so sweetly joined ?
Where on the double rosebud droops
The fulness of the pensive mind;
Which all too dearly self-involved,

Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee neither hear nor see:

But break it. In the name of wife,
And in the rights that name may give,

Are clasped the moral of thy life,

EPILOGUE.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And, if you find a meaning there,
O whisper to your glass, and say,
"What wonder, if he thinks me fair?"
What wonder I was all unwise,

To shape the song for your delight,

Like long-tailed birds of Paradise,

That float through Heaven, and cannot light?

Or old-world trains, upheld at court

By Cupid-boys of blooming hueBut take it earnest wed with sport, And either sacred unto you.

Nor finds a closer truth than this

All-graceful head, so richly curled, And evermore a costly kiss,

The prelude to some brighter world.

For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,

And

every bird of Eden burst

In carol, every bud to flower,

What eyes, like thine, have wakened hopes?
What lips, like thine, so sweetly joined ?
Where on the double rosebud droops
The fulness of the pensive mind;
Which all too dearly self-involved,

Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee neither hear nor see:
But break it. In the name of wife,
And in the rights that name may give,

Are clasped the moral of thy life,

EPILOGUE.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And, if you find a meaning there,
O whisper to your glass, and say,
"What wonder, if he thinks me fair?"
What wonder I was all unwise,

To shape the song for your delight,

Like long-tailed birds of Paradise,

That float through Heaven, and cannot light?

Or old-world trains, upheld at court

By Cupid-boys of blooming hue

But take it earnest wed with sport,

And either sacred unto you.