LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC.
IT.
THE FLIGHT.
IFT up thine eyes! for night is shed around,
As light profound, :
And visible as snow on steepled hills,
Where silence fills
The shaded hollows: night, a royal queen
Most dimly seen
Through silken curtains that bedeck the bed.
Lift up thine head !
For night is here, a dragon, to devour
The slow sweet hour
Filled with all smoke of incense, and the praise
More loud than day’s
That swings its barren censer in the sky,
And asks to die >
Because the sea will hear no hollow moan
Beyond its own,
Because the sea that kissed dead Sappho sings
Of strange dark things—
Shapes of bright breasts that purple as the sun
Grows dark and dun,
Of pallid lips more haggard for the kiss
Of Salmacis,
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