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As doth a blind man's eye upon his leaden face
Or let it be extinguished like a coal,
Its blackness and its cold, let them return:
Shall the stars mourn in heaven, that happy throng,
Their sinful sister long?
I watched the Pleiads one serenest night
(The flowers were shut—a solitary bird
Was in that silence heard),
Pellucid, soft, and bright,
They seemed methought to share
The tender pleasure of the earth and air,
They clung and clustered happily—methinks they did not mourn!
I WOULD.
Little it were (and that by me uncraved),
Though by the powerful magic of my pen
All time should own thy peerless beauty saved
For an eternal idol among men.
Something indeed it were, I justly own,
My passion to embroider on the hem
Of thy perfections—so to send it down
Futurity, appendent upon them.
