George Darley (Джордж Дарли)

* * *

IT is not Beauty I demand,
    A crystal brow, the moon's despair, 
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
    Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.

Tell me not of your starry eyes,
    Your lips that seem on roses fed, 
Your breasts where Cupid trembling lies,
    Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed.

A bloomy pair of vermeil cheeks,
    Like Hebe's in her ruddiest hours, 
A breath that softer music speaks
    Than summer winds a-wooing flowers.

These are but gauds; nay, what are lips?
    Coral beneath the ocean-stream, 
Whose brink when your adventurer sips
    Full oft he perisheth on them.

And what are cheeks but ensigns oft
    That wave hot youth to fields of blood? 
Did Helen's breast though ne'er so soft,
    Do Greece or Ilium any good?

Eyes can with baleful ardor burn,
    Poison can breath that erst perfumed, 
There's many a white hand holds an urn
    With lovers' hearts to dust consumed.

For crystal brows--there's naught within,
    They are but empty cells for pride; 
He who the Syren's hair would win
    Is mostly strangled in the tide.

Give me, instead of beauty's bust,
    A tender heart, a loyal mind, 
Which with temptation I could trust,
    Yet never linked with error find.

One in whose gentle bosom I
    Could pour my secret heart of woes. 
Like the care-burdened honey-fly
    That hides his murmurs in the rose.

My earthly comforter! whose love
    So indefeasible might be, 
That when my spirit won above
    Hers could not stay for sympathy.

1. Lenimina Laborum. 35. Departing Music
2. Lenimina Laborum. 43. On a Fountain
3. Lenimina Laborum. 22. On the Death of a Young Girl
4. Lenimina Laborum. 55. Deep in the ocean's thundering wave
5. Lenimina Laborum. 18. The Cross-Examination

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