Australian and Other Poems/To Mirze I
TO MIRZE.
I.
Thee, beauteous Mirze! and gentle as beautiful,
If e'er the feature indexed forth the soul,
Late when I saw where graces writ the roll
Of all our city's fairest, when to cull
Perplexed the eye of taste, and had defied
But that thy form was there to fix its gaze;
Methought how hard that e'er that witching maze
Of charms into the beauty-waning tide
Of age should float. Ah me! that polished brow.
Ah me! those lips that like a bursting rose,
The teeth that rival snow-drops half enclose.
Ah me! those eyes that cheering radiance throw
Like kindly stars that through the tempest peep.
When ships lie hopeless in the troubled deep.