Because all words, tho' cull'd with choicest art, Failing to give the bitter of the sweet, Wither beneath the palate, and the heart Faints, faded by its heat. MARGARET. 1. O SWEET pale Margaret, What lit your eyes with tearful power, From all things outward you have won A tearful grace, as tho' you stood Between the rainbow and the sun. Of dainty sorrow without sound, 2. You love, remaining peacefully, To hear the murmur of the strife, But enter not the toil of life. Your spirit is the calmed sea, Laid by the tumult of the fight. You are the evening star, alway Remaining betwixt dark and bright: Lull'd echoes of laborious day Come to you, gleams of mellow light 3. What can it matter, Margaret, What songs below the waning stars The lion-heart, Plantagenet, Sang looking thro' his prison-bars? The last wild thought of Chatelét, 4. A fairy shield your Genius made And gave you on your natal day. Your sorrow, only sorrow's shade, Keeps real sorrow far away. You move not in such solitudes, You are not less divine, But more human in your moods, Than your twin-sister, Adeline. Your hair is darker, and your eyes Touch'd with a somewhat darker hue, But ever trembling thro' the dew Of dainty-woful sympathies. 5. O sweet pale Margaret, O rare pale Margaret, Come down, come down, and hear me speak: Tie up the ringlets on your cheek: The sun is just about to set, The arching limes are tall and shady, Rise from the feast of sorrow, lady, Where all day long you sit between Or only look across the lawn, Look out below your bower-eaves, Look down, and let blue eyes dawn your THE BLACKBIRD. O BLACKBIRD! sing me something well: While all the neighbors shoot thee round, I keep smooth plats of fruitful ground, Where thou may'st warble, eat, and dwell. The espaliers and the standards all Are thine; the range of lawn and park: The unnetted black-hearts ripen dark, All thine, against the garden-wall. Yet tho' I spared thee all the spring, A golden bill! the silver tongue, That made thee famous once, when young: And in the sultry garden-squares, Now thy flute-notes are changed to coarse, I hear thee not at all, or hoarse As when a hawker hawks his wares. Take warning! he that will not sing THE DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow, Old year, you must not die: He lieth still: he doth not move: He gave me a friend, and a true true-love, So long as you have been with us, He froth'd his bumpers to the brim ; Old year, you shall not die; He was full of joke and jest, To see him die, across the waste His son and heir doth ride post-haste, Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend, |