marrow passion evermore devours,
Prey to memories that haunt thee e'en in visions of the night;
And a year shall scarcely pluck thee from thy miserable plight."
Such and divers such reproaches did I heap upon my soul.
And my soul in turn made answer:--"Whoso deems he can control
Wily love, the same shall lightly gaze upon the stars of heaven
And declare by what their number overpasses seven times seven.
Will I, nill I, I may never from my neck his yoke unloose.
So, my friend, a god hath willed it: he whose plots could outwit Zeus,
And the queen whose home is Cyprus. I, a leaflet of to-day,
I whose breath is in my nostrils, am I wrong to own his sway?"
FRAGMENT PROM THE "BERENICE."
Ye that would fain net fish and wealth withal,
For bare existence harrowing yonder mere,
To this our Lady slay at even-fall
That holy fish, which, since it hath no peer
For gloss and sheen, the dwellers about here
Have named the Silver Fish. This done, let down
Your nets, and draw them up, and never fear
To find them empty * * * *
EPIGRAMS AND EPITAPHS.
I.
Yours be yon dew-steep'd roses, yours be yon
Thick-clustering ivy, maids of Helicon:
Thine, Pythian Paean, that dark-foliaged bay;
With such thy Delphian crags thy front array.
This horn'd and shaggy ram shall stain thy shrine,
Who crops e'en now the feathering turpentine.
II.
To Pan doth white-limbed Daphnis offer here
(He once piped sweetly on his herdsman's flute)
His reeds of many a stop, his barbed spear,
And scrip, wherein he held his hoards of fruit.
III.
Daphnis, thou slumberest on the leaf-strown lea,
Thy frame at rest, thy springes newly spread
O'er the fell-side. But two are hunting thee:
Pan, and Priapus with his fair young head
Hung with wan ivy. See! they come, they leap
Into thy lair--fly, fly,--shake off the coil of sleep!
IV.
For yon oaken avenue, swain, you must steer,
Where a statue of figwood, you'll see, has been set:
It has never been barked, has three legs and no ear;
But I think there is life in the patriarch yet.
He is handsomely shrined within fair chapel-walls;
Where, fringed with sweet cypress and myrtle and bay,
A stream ever-fresh from the rock's hollow falls,
And the ringleted vine her ripe st
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