Match her ye across the sea, Natures fond and fiery; Ye who zest the turtle’s nest With the eagle’s eyrie. Soft and loving is her soul, Swift and lofty soaring; Mixing with its dove-like dole Passionate adoring.
Such a she who’ll match with me? In flying or pursuing, Subtle wiles are in her smiles To set the world a-wooing. She is steadfast as a star, And yet the maddest maiden: She can wage a gallant war, And give the peace of Eden.
NIGHT, like a dying mother, Eyes her young offspring, Day. The birds are dreamily piping. And O, my love, my darling! The night is life ebb’d away: Away beyond our reach! A sea that has cast us pale on the beach; Weeds with the weeds and the pebbles That hear the lone tamarisk rooted in sand Sway With the song of the sea to the land.
THOUGH I am faithful to my loves lived through, And place them among Memory’s great stars, Where burns a face like Hesper: one like Mars: Of visages I get a moment’s view, Sweet eyes that in the heaven of me, too, Ascend, tho’ virgin to my life they passed. Lo, these within my destiny seem glassed At times so bright, I wish that Hope were new. A gracious freckled lady, tall and grave, Went, in a shawl voluminous and white, Last sunset by; and going sow’d a glance. Earth is too poor to hold a second chance; I will not ask for more than Fortune gave: My heart she goes from—never from my sight!
O MY lover! the night like a broad smooth wave Bears us onward, and morn, a black rock, shines wet. How I shuddered—I knew not that I was a slave, Till I looked on thy face:—then I writhed in the net. Then I felt like a thing caught by fire, that her star Glowed dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.
And he came, whose I am: O my lover! he came: And his slave, still so envied of women, was I: And I turned as a hissing leaf spits from the flame, Yes, I shrivelled to dust from him, haggard and dry. O forgive her:—she was but as dead lilies are: The life of her heart fled from Shemselnihar.
Yet with thee like a full throbbing rose how I bloom! Like a rose by the fountain whose showering we hear, As we lie, O my lover! in this rich gloom, Smelling faint the cool breath of the lemon-groves near. As we lie gazing out on that glowing great star— Ah! dark on the bosom of Shemselnihar.