Page:Poems Stuart.djvu/42

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POEMS

LEDA.
Do you remember, Leda?

There are those who love, to whom Love brings
Great gladness: such thing have not I.
Love looks and has no mercy, brings
Long doom to others. Such was I.
Heart breaking hand upon the lute,
Touching one note only . . . such were you.
Who shall play now upon that lute
Long last made musical by you?
Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
Blind frost upon the eyes of flowers.
Who shall now praise the shrivelled fruit,
Or raise the eyelids of those flowers?

I dare not watch that hidden pool,
Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
Lifting the wide, brown, shaken pool,
But round me falls that secret wing,
And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain
That is half-terror and half-bliss

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