NEREIA
To lips more fresh and flowers more beautiful.
For on the marble terrace lay asleep,
Beneath the purple awning still outspread,
A multitude of maidens. Softly fell
The clinging robes round the fair limbs, relax’d,
At touch of sleep’s kind hand, into such grace
As movement scarce can know. Some spell it seem’d
Had sweetly stol’n upon them unaware,
With dreamy mesh enfolding them; for none
Had laid her down as tho’ in wait for sleep,
Yet every one was bended low with sleep
As rosebuds bend with dew. One stay’d her head
Upon the knees of another, whose own throat,
Fall’n back on the low parapet ’mid the mass
Of all her dusky tresses, gleam’d and shone
Even thro’ the dim grey air; and close beside,
With both arms hawthorn-white cross’d wearily,
And tir’d brow droop’d upon them, lay one more—
Indeed, the ground was strewn with sleeping girls.
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