With primrose faith and opiate asphodel.
Phaon
Why brood on things turned ashes long ago
When softly dawn by golden dawn, and eve
By opal eve, Earth whispers: Life is good?
Sappho
Once I had listened to you e’er I go;—
For like a god you seemed in those glad days
Of droning wings and languorous afternoons,
When close beside the murmuring sea we walked.
Then did the odorous summer ocean seem
A meadow green where foam one moment flowered
And then was gone, and ever came again,
A thousand blossom-burdened Springs in one!
—How like a god you seemed to me; and I
Was then most happy, and at little things
We lightly laughed, and oftentimes we plunged
Waist-deep and careless in the cool green waves,
As Tethys once and Oceanus played
Upon the golden ramparts of the world:
Then would we rest, and muse upon the sands,
Heavy with dreams and touched with some sad peace
Born of our very weariness of joy,
While drooped the wind and all the sea grew still
And unremembered trailed the idle oar
And no leaf moved and hushed were all the birds
And on the dunes the thin green ripples lisped
Themselves to sleep and sails swung dreamily,
Where azure islands floated on the air.
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