I.
The quickening East climbs to yon star,
That, cradled, rocks herself in morn;
The liquid silver broad'ning far
Dawn drencheth cliff, holt, down and tarn.
The trembling splendors gild the sky,
Breath'd from her tawny champion's lips;
The clear green dews above me lie,
Their lustre the dark eyelash tips
Of Oriana sitting by.
The crested cock 'mid his stout dames
Crows from the purple-clover hill;
His glossy coat the morn enflames,
And all his leaping heart doth thrill.
His curving tail sickles the plume
That rosy nods against his eye.
Laughs from deep beds of twinkling bloom
The lilied East when wand'reth nigh
My Oriana in the gloom.
The rooks swarm clatt'ring 'round the tow'rs;
The falcon jingles in the air;
The bursting dawn around him show'rs
A clinging glory of wan glare.
From the green knoll the shouting hunt
With swollen cheeks clangs his alarms;
Mayhap I hear the bristler's grunt:
But where my Oriana charms
The wood, hushed is its ev'ry haunt.
The willowed lake is cool with cloud
Breaking and dimming into shreds,
Which gauze the azure, thinly crowd
The mist-pink West with hazy threads.
A wild swan ruffles o'er the mere
Soft as the drifting of a soul;
A double swan she doth appear
In mirage fixed 'twixt pole and pole
When Oriana singeth near.
II.
Spring high into the shuddering stars,
O florid sunset, burning gold!
Flash on our eyeballs lurid bars
To beam them with air-fires cold!
The blowing dingles soak with light,
The purple coppice hang with blaze;
But where we stand a meeker white
Bloom on us thro' the hill's soft haze,
For Oriana stars the night!
Float from the East, O silver world,
Unto the ocean of the West;
And the foam-sparkles upward hurled,
That fringe the twilight's surging crest,
Snatch up and gather 'round thy brow
In lustrous twine of rosy heat,
And rain on us its starry glow, -
O fragment of the evetide's sheet, -
And Oriana's eyes o'erflow.
O courting cricket, with thy pipe
Now shrill true love thro' the warm grain
O feathered buds, that nodding stripe
The blue glen's night, sigh love again!
Thou glimmering bird, that aye doth wail
From some wind-wavered branch of snow,
Sweep down the moonlit, hay-sweet dale
Thy bubbled anguish, swooning low,
For Oriana walks the vale!
The moon comes sowing all the eve
With myriad star-grains of her light;
The torrent on the crag doth grieve;
The glittering lake is smooth with night.
O mellow lights that o'er us slide,
O wrinkled woods that ridge the steep,
O bearded stems that billowing glide,
With laughing night-dews happy weep,
For Oriana'll be my bride!