es!

Back in the dawn of this beautiful sphere, on it--
Land of the dolorous, desolate face--
Beamed the blue day; and the bountiful year on it
Fostered the leaf and the blossom of grace.
Grand were the lights of its midsummer noon on it--
Mornings of majesty shone on its seas;
Glitter of star and the glory of moon on it
Fell, in the march of the musical breeze.
Valleys and hills, with the whisper of wing in them,
Dells of the daffodil--spaces impearled,
Flowered and flashed with the splendour of Spring in them--
Back in the morn of this wonderful world.

Soft were the words that the thunder then said to it--
Said to this lustre of emerald plain;
Sun brought the yellow, the green, and the red to it--
Sweet were the songs of its silvery rain.
Voices of water and wind in the bays of it
Lingered, and lulled like the psalm of a dream.
Fair were the nights and effulgent the days of it--
Moon was in shadow and shade in the beam.
Summer's chief throne was the marvellous coast of it,
Home of the Spring was its luminous lea:
Garden of glitter! But only the ghost of it
Moans in the south by the ghost of a sea.

Black Lizzie

The gloved and jewelled bards who sing
Of Pippa, Maud, and Dorothea,
Have hardly done the handsome thing
For you, my inky Cytherea.

Flower of a land whose sunny skies
Are like the dome of Dante's clime,
They _might_ have praised your lips, your eyes,
And, eke, your ankles in their rhyme!

But let them pass! To right your wrong,
Aspasia of the ardent South,
Your poet means to sing a song
With some prolixity of mouth.

I'll even sketch you as you are
In Herrick's style of carelessness,
Not overstocked with things that bar
An ample view--to wit, with dress.

You have your blanket, it is true;
But then, if I am right at all,
What best would suit a dame like you
Was worn by Eve before the Fall.

Indeed, the "fashion" is a thing
That never cramped your cornless toes:
Your single jewel is a ring
Slung in your penetrated nose.

I can't detect the flowing lines
Of Grecian features in your face,
Nor are there patent any signs
That link you with the Roman race.

In short, I do not think your mould
Resembles, with its knobs of bone,
The fair Hellenic shapes of old
Whose perfect forms s