LXXV.

LOVE'S FRUITION.

HOW GENEVIEVE WAS WON.

ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I

Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine stealing o'er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve;
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!

She leaned against the armèd man,

The statue of the armèd knight; She stood and listened to my lay, Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,

My hope! my joy! my Genevieve !
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air,

I sang an old and moving story— An old rude song, that suited well That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,

With downcast eyes, and modest grace;

For well she knew, I could not choose

But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the knight that wore

Upon his shield a burning brand; And that for ten long years he wooed The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined and ah !
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,

With downcast eyes, and modest grace;

And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face.

But when I told the cruel scorn

That crazed that bold and lovely knight, And that he crossed the mountain-woods, Nor rested day nor night;

That sometimes from the savage den,

And sometimes from the darksome shade,

And sometimes starting up at once

In green and sunny glade,

There came and looked him in the face

An angel beautiful and bright;

And that he knew it was a fiend,
This miserable knight !

And that unknowing what he did,

He leaped amid a murderous band,

And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;

And how she wept, and clasped his knees;

And how she tended him in vain ;

And ever strove to expiate

The scorn that crazed his brain;

And that she nursed him in a cave,
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;

His dying words-but when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faltering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense

Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve !

The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,

She blushed with love and virgin shame;

And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved-she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stept-
Then suddenly, with timorous eye

She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,

She pressed me with a meek embrace; And bending back her head, looked up, And gazed upon my face.

Twas partly love, and partly fear,

And partly 'twas a bashful art

That I might rather feel, than see
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous bride.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

LXXVI.

KISSES.

WHAT IS A KISS?

AMONG thy fancies tell me this:
What is the thing we call a kiss?
-I shall resolve ye what it is.

It is a creature born and bred
Between the lips all cherry-red,
By love and warm desires fed;
And makes more soft the marriage-bed.

It is an active flame that flies
First to the babies of the eyes,
And charms them there with lullabies,
And stills the bride, too, when she cries.

Then to the chin, the cheek, the ear,
It frisks and flies, now here, now there;
'T is now far off, and now 't is near:
And here and there and everywhere.

Has it a speaking virtue ?—Yes.

How speaks it? Say.-Do you but this :
Part your joined lips; then speaks your kiss;
And this love's sweetest language is.

Has it a body?-Ay, and wings,

With thousand rare encolourings;
And, as it flies, it gently sings;
Love honey yields, but never stings.

Robert Herrick.

LXXVII.

KISSES.

RECIPROCATION.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea-
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

LXXVIII.

KISSES.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

THE WHISPERED "NO."

ONE kiss, dear maid!—I said and sighed

Your scorn the little boon denied.

Ah, why refuse the blameless bliss?

Can danger lurk within a kiss?
Yon viewless wanderer of the vale,
The spirit of the western gale,

At morning's break, at evening's close,
Inhales the sweetness of the rose,

And hover's oer the uninjured bloom,
Sighing back the soft perfume.

Vigour to the zephyr's wing

Her nectar-breathing kisses fling;