To what she wanted: I held down a branch
And gather'd her some blossoms, since their hour
Was come, and bees had wounded them, and flies
Of harder wing were working their way through
And scattering them in fragments under foot.
So crisp were some, they rattled unevolved,
Others, ere broken off, fell into shells,
For such appear the petals when detach'd,
Unbending, brittle, lucid, white like snow,
And like snow not seen through, by eye or sun:
Yet every one her gown received from me
Was fairer than the first - I thought not so,
But so she praised them to reward my care.
I said: "You find the largest."
"This indeed,"
Cried she, "is large and sweet."

His name and life's brief date. Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be, And, oh: pray, too, for me!

To Corinth,

Queen of the double sea, beloved of him
Who shakes the world's foundations, thou hast seen
Glory in all her beauty, all her forms;
Seen her walk back with Theseus when he left
The bones of Sciron bleaching to the wind,
Above the ocean's roar and cormorant's flight,
So high that vastest billows from above
Shew but like herbage waving in the mead;
Seen generations throng thy Isthmian games,
And pass away
the beautiful, the brave,
And them who sang their praises.

doubts.

I dared not touch it; for it seemed a part
Of her own self; fresh, full, the most mature
Of blossoms, yet a blossom; with a touch
To fall, and yet unfallen.

She drew back

The boon she tendered, and then, finding not
The ribbon at her waist to fix it in,
Dropt it, as loth to drop it, on the rest.

The Maid's Lament.

I loved him not; and yet, now he is gone,

I feel I am alone.

But, O Queen,

As when they first were uttered, are those words
Divine which praised the valiant and the just;
And tears have often stopt, upon that ridge
So perilous, him who brought before his eye
The Colchian babes.

"And shall I too deceive?"

Cries from the fiery car an angry voice;
And swifter than two falling stars descend

For reasons not to love him once I sought,
And wearied all my thought

To vex myself and him: I now would give
My love could he but live

Who lately lived for me, and, when he found
"Twas fain, in holy ground

He hid his face amid the shades of death!
I waste for him my breath

Who wasted his for me: but mine returns,
And this lorn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep

Tears that had melted his soft heart: for years

Wept he as bitter tears!

"Merciful God!" such was his latest prayer,
"These may she never share!"
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold
Than daisies in the mould,

Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,

As flowers in stillest noon before the sun,
They lie three paces from him such they lie
As when he left them sleeping side by side,
A mother's arm round each, a mother's cheeks
Between them, flushed with happiness and love.
He was more changed than they were- doomed
to shew

Thee and the stranger, how defaced and scarred
Grief hunts us down the precipice of years,
And whom the faithless prey upon the last.

To give the inertest masses of our earth
Her loveliest forms was thine, to fix the gods
Within thy walls, and hang their tripods round
With fruits and foliage knowing not decay.
A nobler work remains: thy citadel

Invites all Greece; o'er lands and floods remote
Many are the hearts that still beat high for thee:
Confide then in thy strength, and unappalled
Look down upon the plain, while yokemate kings
Run bellowing, where their herdsmen goad them on;