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Translated by Leigh Hunt
CLEAR, fresh, and dulcet streams, | |
| Which the fair shape who seems | |
| To me sole woman, haunted at noontide; | |
| Fair bough, so gently fit, | |
| (I sigh to think of it,) | 5 |
| Which lent a pillar to her lovely side; | |
| And turf, and flowers bright-eyed, | |
| O’er which her folded gown | |
| Flowed like an angel’s down; | |
| And you, O holy air and hushed, | 10 |
| Where first my heart at her sweet glances gushed; | |
| Give ear, give ear with one consenting, | |
| To my last words, my last, and my lamenting. | |
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| If ’t is my fate below, | |
| And heaven will have it so, | 15 |
| 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, | 20 |
| 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, | 25 |
| Slip from my travailled flesh, and from my bones outworn. | |
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| Perhaps, some future hour, | |
| To her accustomed bower | |
| Might come the untamed, and yet the gentle she; | |
| And where she saw me first, | 30 |
| Might turn with eyes athirst | |
| And kinder joy to look again for me; | |
| Then, O the charity! | |
| Seeing amidst the stones | |
| The earth that held my bones, | 35 |
| 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. | |
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| How well I call to mind, | 40 |
| When from those boughs the wind | |
| Shook down upon her bosom flower on flower; | |
| And there she sat, meek-eyed, | |
| In midst of all that pride, | |
| Sprinkled and blushing through an amorous shower. | 45 |
| Some to her hair paid dower, | |
| And seemed to dress the curls | |
| Queenlike, with gold and pearls; | |
| Some, snowing, on her drapery stopped, | |
| Some on the earth, some on the water dropped; | 50 |
| While others, fluttering from above, | |
| Seemed wheeling round in pomp, and saying, “Here reigns Love.” | |
| How often then I said, | |
| Inward, and filled with dread, | |
| “Doubtless this creature came from paradise!” | 55 |
| For at her look the while, | |
| Her voice, and her sweet smile, | |
| And heavenly air, truth parted from mine eyes; | |
| So that, with long-drawn sighs, | |
| I said, as far from men, | 60 |
| “How came I here, and when!” | |
| I had forgotten; and alas! | |
| Fancied myself in heaven, not where I was; | |
| And from that time till this I bear | |
| Such love for the green bower I cannot rest elsewhere. | 65 |
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