Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,
What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!
To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,
A signet, a fan-mount, a filligree-basket!

VI

Soon, at the King’s a mere lozenge to give
And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!
But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head
And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

VII

Quick—is it finished? The colour’s too grim!
Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim?
Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,
And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

VIII

What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me—
That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free
The soul from those masculine eyes,—say, ‘no!’
To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.

IX

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought
My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought
Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall,
Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

X

Not that I bid you spare her the pain!
Let death be felt and the proof remain;
Brand, burn up, bite into its grace—
He is sure to remember her dying face!

XI

Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose
It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee—
If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

XI

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,
You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!
But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings
Ere I know it—next moment I dance at the King’s!

731   Earl Mertoun’s Song

THERE’s a woman like a dewdrop, she’s so purer than
        the purest;
And her noble heart’s the noblest, yes, and her sure faith’s
      the surest:
And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth
      of lustre
Hid i’ the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild-
      grape cluster,
Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck’s rose-misted
    marble:
Then her voice’s music... call it the well’s bubbling, the
      bird’s warble!

And this woman says, ‘My days were sunless and my nights
      were moonless,
Parch’d the pleasant April herbage, and the lark’s heart’s out-
      break tuneless,
If you loved me not!’ And I who (ah, for words of flame!)
      adore her,
Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her—
I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me,
And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she
      makes me!