the Friday of the Holy Week,
The weather, for a wonder, mild and fair;
From hill to valley, and from plain to peak,
We wandered long, delighting in the air.

At length, exhausted by the pilgrimage,
We found a sort of natural divan,
Whence we could view the landscape, or engage
Our eyes in rapture on the heaven's wide span.

Hand clasped in hand, shoulder on shoulder laid,
With sense of something ventured, something missed,
Our two lips parted, each; no word was said,
And silently we kissed.

Around us blue-bell and shy violet
Their simple incense seemed to wave on high;
Surely we saw, with glances heavenward set,
God smiling from his azure balcony.

"Love on!" he seemed to say, "I make more sweet
The road of life you are to wander by,
Spreading the velvet moss beneath your feet;
Kiss, if you will; I shall not play the spy."

Love on, love on! In murmurs of the breeze,
In limpid stream, and in the woodland screen
That burgeons fresh in the renovated green,
In stars, in flowers, and music of the trees,

Love on, love on! But if my golden sun,
My spring, that comes once more to gladden earth,
If these should move your breasts to grateful mirth,
I ask no thanksgiving, your kiss is one.

A month passed by; and, when the roses bloomed
In beds that we had planted in the spring,
When least of all I thought my love was doomed,
You cast it from you like a noisome thing.

Not that your scorn was all reserved for me,
It flies about the world by fits and starts;
Your changeful fancy fits impartially
From knave of diamonds to knave of hearts.

And now you are happy, with a brilliant suite
Of bowing slaves and insincere gallants;
Go where you will, you see them at your feet;
A bed of perfumed posies round you flaunts:

The Ball's your garden: an admiring globe
Of lovers rolls about the lit saloon,
And, at the rustling of your silken robe,
The pack, in chorus, bay you like the moon.

Shod in the sof