Let once again these aching arms be placed,
The tender gaolers of thy waist!

And let me feel that warm breath here and there

To spread a rapture in my very hair,—

O, the sweetness of the pain!

Give me those lips again!

Enough! Enough! it is enough for me
To dream of thee!

SONNET TO FANNY.

I CRY your mercy-pity-love !—aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalises not,

One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen-without a blot !
O! let me have thee whole,-all-all-be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor

zest

Of love, your kiss,-those hands, those eyes divine,

That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,

Yourself your soul-in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,

Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

50

55

SONNET.

WRITTEN ON A BLANK PAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S

66

POEMS, FACING A LOVER'S COMPLAINT."

BRIGHT star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.*

* Lord Houghton gives as "another reading":"Half passionless, and so swoon on to death,"

OTHO THE GREAT:

A TRAGEDY,

IN FIVE ACTS.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

OTHO THE GREAT, Emperor of Germany.
LUDOLPH, his Son.

CONRAD, Duke of Franconia.

ALBERT, a Knight, favoured by Otho.
SIGIFRED, an Officer, friend of Ludoph.
THEODORE, Officers.

GONFRED,

ETHELBERT, an Abbot.

GERSA, Prince of Hungary.

An Hungarian Captain.

Physician.

Page.

Nobles, Knights, Attendants, and Soldiers.

ERMINIA, Niece of Otho.

AURANTHE, Conrad's Sister.

Ladies and Attendants.

SCENE. The Castle of Friedburg, its vicinity, and the

Hungarian Camp.

TIME. One Day.