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ROMANTIC, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Roses that lift their snowy eyelids
Last Line: O life in life, o saint and shrine, in vain.


1

Roses that lift their snowy eyelids,
Green voices calling,
And a bell;
And the returning wings
To spring.
Stay, summer, summer, come not yet --
The bell is more than the church,
The song than the nest,
And the cry of desire
More than all that follows.

2

The wind lifts the leaves in the court
Like passing flames,
It flings them against the window where we sit.

Like honey are your brooding eyes,
Filled with summer and the sun,
White rain,
And soft skies at the close of day.

Where is their home, where in the far-away?
My heart is broken with your peace
And with your tenderness,
Dark with your golden light, shaken with your stillness.

The wind shudders and dies
Upon the infinite, transient night.

3

Thou art as alabaster filled with wine
Wherein the sun of summer shineth through,
Tinged with the sound of bees when the rich vine
Shakes down its garlands in the diamond dew.

Thou art a gleaming saint amid the trees
Whereon the holy moonlight lieth white,
In some old garden where the centuries
Trail their dark mantle in the silent night.

And songs of lovers dead long since I hear,
Of them whose dearest joy was touched with pain;
And if I had or had thee not, it were,
O Life in Life, O Saint and Shrine, in vain.





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