XVIII. THE day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semitone, Bright eyes, accomplish'd shape, and lang'rous waist! Faded the flower and all its budded charms, Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, Of fragrant-curtain'd love begins to weave Merciful love that tantalizes 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, 1819. XX. KEATS'S LAST SONNET. BRIGHT star, would I were steadfast as thou art! Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike 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 steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest, * Another reading:— Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death. THE END. |