Part 26

Lilies, golden and white, by the curls Of their broad flat leaves hung swaying. A wreath of languid twining girls Streamed upward, long locks disarraying.

XIX

Their cheeks had the satin frost-glow of the moon; Their eyes the fire of Sirius. They circled, and droned a monotonous tune, Abandoned to love delirious.

Like lengths of convolvulus torn from the hedge, And trailing the highway over, The dreamy-eyed mistresses circled the sedge, And called for a lover, a lover!

XXI

I sank, I rose through seas of eyes, In odorous swathes delicious: They fanned me with impetuous sighs, They hit me with kisses vicious.

XXII

My ears were spelled, my neck was coiled, And I with their fury was glowing, When the marbly waters bubbled and boiled At a watery noise of crowing.

XXIII

They dragged me low and low to the lake: Their kisses more stormily showered; On the emerald brink, in the white moon’s wake, An earthly damsel cowered.

XXIV

Fresh heart-sobs shook her knitted hands Beneath a tiny suckling, As one by one of the doleful bands Dived like a fairy duckling.

XXV

And now my turn had come—O me! What wisdom was mine that second! I dropped on the adorer’s knee; To that sweet figure I beckoned.

XXVI

Save me! save me! for now I know The powers that Nature gave me, And the value of honest love I know:— My village lily! save me!

XXVII

Come ’twixt me and the sisterhood, While the passion-born phantoms are fleeing! Oh, he that is true to flesh and blood Is true to his own being!

XXVIII

And he that is false to flesh and blood Is false to the star within him: And the mad and hungry sisterhood All under the tides shall win him!

XXIX

My village lily! save me! save! For strength is with the holy:— Already I shuddered to feel the wave, As I kept sinking slowly:—

XXX

I felt the cold wave and the under-tug Of the Brides, when—starting and shrinking— Lo, Adrian tilts the water-jug! And Bruges with morn is blinking.

XXXI

Merrily sparkles sunny prime On gabled peak and arbour: Merrily rattles belfry-chime The song of Sevilla’s Barber.

THE OLD CHARTIST

WHATE’ER I be, old England is my dam! So there’s my answer to the judges, clear. I’m nothing of a fox, nor of a lamb; I don’t know how to bleat nor how to leer: I’m for the nation! That’s why you see me by the wayside here, Returning home from transportation.