Still dear to memory! when, in odorous showers,
    Scattering their balmy flowers,
    To summer airs th’ o’ershadowing branches bow’d,
    The while, with humble state,
    In all the pomp of tribute sweets she sate,
    Wrapt in the roseate cloud! 
    Now clustering blossoms deck her vesture’s hem,
    Now her bright tresses gem,—­
    (In that all-blissful day,
    Like burnish’d gold with orient pearls inwrought,)
    Some strew the turf—­some on the waters float! 
    Some, fluttering, seem to say
    In wanton circlets toss’d, “Here Love holds sovereign sway!”

    Oft I exclaim’d, in awful tremor rapt,
    “Surely of heavenly birth
    This gracious form that visits the low earth!”
    So in oblivion lapp’d
    Was reason’s power, by the celestial mien,
    The brow,—­the accents mild—­
    The angelic smile serene! 
    That now all sense of sad reality
    O’erborne by transport wild,—­
    “Alas! how came I here, and when?” I cry,—­
    Deeming my spirit pass’d into the sky! 
    E’en though the illusion cease,
    In these dear haunts alone my tortured heart finds peace.

    If thou wert graced with numbers sweet, my song! 
    To match thy wish to please;
    Leaving these rocks and trees,
    Thou boldly might’st go forth, and dare th’ assembled throng.

    DACRE.

      Clear, fresh, and dulcet streams,
    Which the fair shape, who seems
    To me sole woman, haunted at noon-tide;
    Fair bough, so gently fit,
    (I sigh to think of it,)
    Which lent a pillar to her lovely side;
    And turf, and flowers bright-eyed,
    O’er which her folded gown
    Flow’d like an angel’s down;
    And you, O holy air and hush’d,
    Where first my heart at her sweet glances gush’d;
    Give ear, give ear, with one consenting,
    To my last words, my last and my lamenting.

    If ’tis my fate below,
    And Heaven will have it so,
    That Love must close these dying eyes in tears,
    May my poor dust be laid
    In middle of your shade,
    While my soul, naked, mounts to its own spheres. 
    The thought would calm my fears,
    When taking, out of breath,
    The doubtful step of death;
    For never could my spirit find
    A stiller port after the stormy wind;
    Nor in more calm, abstracted bourne,
    Slip from my travail’d flesh, and from my bones outworn.

    Perhaps, some future hour,
    To her accustom’d bower
    Might come the untamed, and yet the gentle she;
    And where she saw me first,
    Might turn with eyes athirst
    And kinder joy to look again for me;
    Then, oh! the charity! 
    Seeing amidst the stones
    The earth that held my bones,
    A sigh for very love at last
    Might ask of Heaven to pardon me the past: 
    And Heaven itself could not say nay,
    As with her gentle veil she wiped the tears away.