Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove; O no; it is an ever-fixèd mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. When, for the crowning vernal sweet, Among the slopes and crags I meet The pilot's pretty daughter. Round her gentle, happy face, As lightly blew the veering wind, They touched her cheeks, or waved behind, Unbound, unbraided, and unlooped; Or when to tie her shoe she stooped, Below her chin the half-curls drooped, And veiled the pilot's daughter. Rising, she tossed them gayly back, With gesture infantine and brief, To fall around as soft a neck As the wild-rose's leaf. Her Sunday frock of lilac shade (That choicest tint) was neatly made, And not too long to hide from view The stout but noway clumsy shoe, And stockings' smoothly-fitting blue, That graced the pilot's daughter. With look half timid and half droll, And then with slightly downcast eyes, And blush that outward softly stole, Unless it were the skies Whose sun-ray shifted on her cheek, She turned when I began to speak; But 'twas a brightness all her own That in her firm light step was shown, And the clear cadence of her tone; The pilot's lovely daughter. Were it my lot (the sudden wish) To hand a pilot's oar and sail, Or haul the dripping moonlight mesh, Spangled with herring-scale; By dying stars, how sweet 'twould be, And dawn-blow freshening the sea, With weary, cheery pull to shore, To gain my cottage home once more, And clasp, before I reach the door, My love, the pilot's daughter. This element beside my feet Allures, a tepid wine of gold; One touch, one taste, dispels the cheat 'Tis salt and nipping cold: A fisher's hut, the scene perforce MY PLAYMATE. THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill, Their song was soft and low; The blossoms in the sweet May wind Were falling like the snow. The blossoms drifted at our feet, The orchard birds sang clear: The sweetest and the saddest day It seemed of all the year. For, more to me than birds ΟΙ flowers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, Who fed her father's kine?. She left us in the bloom of May: But she came back no more. I walk with noiseless feet the round Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring She lives where all the golden year There haply with her jewelled hands The wild grapes wait us by the brook, sweet The woods of Follymill. The lilies blossom in the pond; The bird builds in the tree; The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill The slow song of the sea. |