Talking Of Pleasure, This Moment I Was

How I Like Claret!...it Fills One's Mouth With A Gushing Freshness, Then Goes Down To Cool And Feverless; Then, You Do Not Feel It Quarrelling With One's Liver. No; 'tis Rather A Peace-maker, And Lies As Quiet As It Did In The Grape. Then It Is As Fragrant As The Queen Bee, And The More Ethereal Part Mounts Into The Brain, Not Assaulting The Cerebral Apartments, Like A Bully Looking For His Trull, And Hurrying From Door To Door, Bouncing Against The Wainscott, But Rather Walks Like Aladdin About His Enchanted Palace, So Gently That You Do Not Feel His Step.

Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast As Thou Art--- Not In Lone Splendour Hung Aloft The Night And Watching, With Eternal Lids Apart, Like Nature's Patient, Sleepless Eremite, The Moving Waters At Their Priestlike Task Of Pure Ablution Round Earth's Human Shores, Or Gazing On The New Soft-fallen Mask Of Snow Upon The Mountains And The Moors--- No---yet Still Stedfast, Still Unchangeable, Pillowed Upon My Fair Love's Ripening Breast, To Feel For Ever Its Soft Fall And Swell, Awake For Ever In A Sweet Unrest, Still, Still To Hear Her Tender-taken Breath, And So Live Ever---or Else Swoon In Death.

To Sorrow I Bade Good-morrow, And Thought To Leave Her Far Away Behind; But Cheerly, Cheerly, She Loves Me Dearly: She Is So Constant To Me, And So Kind.

Alas! When Passion Is Both Meek And Wild!

Adieu! Adieu! Thy Plaintive Anthem Fades Past The Near Meadows, Over The Still Stream, Up The Hill-side; And Now 'tis Buried Deep In The Next Valley-glades: Was It A Vision, Or A Waking Dream? Fled Is That Music:--do I Wake Or Sleep?