To A Sea Shell
Friend of my chamber--O thou spiral shell
That murmurest of the ever-murmuring sea!
Repeating with eternal constancy
Whatever memories the wave can tell;
Whatever harmonies may rise and swell,
Whatever sadness in the deep may be--
They are the ocean's, and desired of thee;
Thou treasurest what thou dost love so well.
So all my heart is one voluted fold,
Shielding one face, and evermore it seems
Upon the threshold of the prying day,
Hid in the tangle of reluctant dreams;
And in the noontide, and the evening grey,
Its light illumines secrecies untold
Rosalind
Rosalind has come to town!
All the street’s a meadow,
Balconies are beeches brown
With a drowsy shadow,
And the long-drawn window panes
Are the foliage of her lanes.
Rosalind about me brings
Sunny brooks that quiver
Unto palpitating wings
Ere they kiss the river,
And her eyes are trusting birds
That do nestle without words.
Rosalind! to me you bear
Memories of a meeting
When the love-star smote the air
15
With a pulse’s beating:
Does your spirit love to pace
In the temple of that place?
Rosalind! be thou the fane
For my soul’s uprising,
Where my heart may reach again
Thoughts of heaven’s devising:
Be the solace self-bestowed
In the shrine of Love’s abode!
