How softly on the Spanish shore she plays, Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown, Distinct, though darkening with her waning phase; But Mauritania's giant-shadows frown, From mountain-cliff to coast descending sombre down. XXIII 'Tis night, when meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end: Death hath but little left him to destroy! Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy? Thus bending o'er the vessel's laving side, A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; XXV. To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, To climb the trackless mountain all unseen • Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled. XXVI. But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men, To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, And roam along, the world's tired denizen, With none who bless us, none whom we can bless XXVII. More blest the life of godly Eremite, Watching at Eve upon the giant height, Which looks o'er waves so blue, skies so serene, That he who there at such an hour hath been Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack, Till on some jocund morn-lo, land! and all is well. XXIX. But not in silence pass Calipso's isles, The sister tenants of the middle deep; There for the weary still a haven smiles, Though the fair goddess long hath ceased to weep, And o'er her cliffs a fruitless watch to keep For him who dared prefer a mortal bride : Here, too, his boy essayed the dreadful leap Stern Mentor urged from high to yonder tide; While thus of both bereft, the nymph-queen doubly sighed XXX. Her reign is past, her gentle glories gone. This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine: To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine, Thus Harold deemed, as on that lady's eye He looked, and met its beam without a thought, Since now he vainly urged him to adore, Well deemed the little God, his ancient sway was o'er. Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze, Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law; And much she marvelled that a youth so raw Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames. XXXIII. Little knew she that seeming marble-heart, Now masked in silence or withheld by pride; And spread its snares licentious far and wide; And had he doated on those eyes so blue, Yet never would he join, the lover's whining crew. Not much he kens, I ween, of woman's breast, But not too humbly, or she will despise Thee and thy suit, though told in moving tropes : Disguise ev'n tenderness, if thou art wise; Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes; Pique her and soothe in turn, soon Passion crowns thy hopes, |