When distance severs us, and we become As parting voyagers of divided lives,
Nothing is stable. Though the deeds we do May bind the nations in a servile chain,
As stands a statue on its pedestal, Amidst the storms of civil mutiny,
The pearly vales that circled round her breast Were laced with azure veins; the roseate glow
O gentle frenzy, too supreme delight! O acrid sweet, most blessed sum of ills!
Within the circle of my darling's charms I stand as grimly as some ruin old,
As some new ghost, that wanders to and fro By dreary Lethe, turns his vacant eyes,
"And miss the way to heaven!" My closing word Is a reproachful echo in my ear;
Perhaps in mercy is the future masked. For who so hardy, if his fate were read,
Poco interés presentan estas cosas para un Concilio, que otras más urgentes
These blows of fate that shake our troubled life, This long, long sorrow o'er our parted fate,
Again I touch thee, vexing instrument, My hard and rarely-mastered Tuscan lute!
"O for my sake do you with fortune chide"-- I almost took sad Shakespeare's thought for mine,
The way I walk, an angel of God's throne, The dearest, brightest, oft with drooping wings,
O let me break my slavehood! Link by link I rend my gyves; not calmly, but with cries
I know not if one beauty less or more This year hath left upon my darling's face,
I love thee, love thee! Let these words atone For all the others--for my jealous rage,
As from his wrist the eager falconer Tosses his hawk upon the windy sky,
O, I am apt of others' charms to sing. I had a mistress with a scarlet lip,
Too full of rapture was this sunny day! My senses ache from that through which they passed:
If I should perish e'er I pen this line, And take my place with the forgotten dead,
Darling, I kiss thee from thy slender feet Up to the curls around thy tender brow;
There blew a breeze across the flowers, that said, "Love is the sweetest thing which mortals know!"
If I were able to disclose thy charms, And truly paint, as they appear to me,
They at the altar pledge their formal vow, Then go, and straight forget that vow was made--
Know you a soul so white and inly pure That sin itself, committed by her hand,
I have heen false for thy repose alone, And the sweet cause half pardoned the offense,
The swell and glitter of this stately stave Are tinsel trappings of but little worth;
A shame arose betwixt my Love and me. I am not worthy to be called her own.
She on the jealous gods' Olympian hill, Unrecognized as mortal, might have taken
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