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THOUGH young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty’s dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood’s lingering miles.

Who knows a woman’s wild caprice?
‘It played with Goethe’s silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father’s “niece”
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.

When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.

We see the Patriarch’s wintry face,
The maid of Egypt’s dusky glow,
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.

Tranced in her lord’s Olympian smile
His lotus-loving Memphian lies,–
The musky daughter of the Nile,
With plaited hair and almond eyes.

Might we but share one wild caress
Ere life’s autumnal blossoms fall,
And Earth’s brown, clinging lips impress
The long cold kiss that waits us all!

My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day,
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.

Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain,
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O’er sense and spirit, heart and brain.

Thou com’st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long!
Dove that would seek the poet’s cage
Lured by the magic breath of song!

She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid,
Love’s drapeau rouge the truth has told!
O’ er girlhood’s yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller’s crimson fold!

Come to my arms!–love heeds not years;
No frost the bud of passion knows.
Ha! what is this my frenzy hears?
A voice behind me uttered,–Rose!

Sweet was her smile,–but not for me;
Alas! when woman looks too kind,
Just turn your foolish head and see,–
Some youth is walking close behind!