Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: And now is all the night her own, to make it Or grave or gay with throngs of waking dreams. Now grows her heart so ripe, a sigh might shake it To showers of fruit, all golden as beseems Hesperian growth. Why not, on nights like this, Should Daphne out from yon green laurel slip ? A Dryad from the ilex, with white hip Quiver'd and thong'd to hunt with Artemis ? To-night, what wonder were it, while such shadows Are taking up such shapes on moonlit mountains, Such star-flies kindling o'er low emerald meadows, Such voices floating out of hill-side fountains, If some full face should from the window greet Whose eyes should be new planetary lights, Whose voice a well of liquid love-delights, And to the distance sighingly entreat her ? EROS. What wonder that I loved her thus, that night ? The Immortals know each other at first sight, And Love is of them. In the fading light Of that delicious eve, whose stars even yet Gild the long dreamless nights, and cannot set, She passed me, thro' the silence: all her hair, Her waving, warm, bright hair neglectfully Pour'd round her snowy throat, as without care Of its own beauty. And when she turn'd on me The sorrowing light of desolate eyes divine, I knew in a moment what our lives must be Henceforth. It lighten'd on me then and there, How she was irretrievably all mine, I hers, — thro' time, become eternity. It could not ever have been otherwise, Gazing into those eyes. And if, before I gazed on them, my soul, Oblivious of her destiny, had follow'd, In days forever silent, the control Of any beauty less divinely hallow'd Than that upon her beautiful white brows, (The serene summits of all earthly sweetness!) Straightway the records of all other vows Of idol-worship faded silently Out of the foldi...