It Is Not Beauty I Demand

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.

George Darley

The Mermaidens' Vesper Hymn

TROOP home to silent grots and caves!

Troop home! and mimic as you go

The mournful windings of the waves

Which to their dark abysses flow.

At this sweet hour, all things beside

In amorous pairs to covert creep;

The swans that brush the evening tide

Homeward in snowy couples keep.

In his green den the murmuring seal

Close by his sleek companion lies;

While singly we to bedward steal,

And close in fruitless sleep our eyes.

In bowers of love men take their rest,

In loveless bowers we sigh alone,

With bosom friends are others blest--

But we have none! but we have none!

George Darley

The Phoenix (from Nepenthe)

O BLEST unfabled Incense Tree,

That burns in glorious Araby,

With red scent chalicing the air,

Till earth-life grow Elysian there!

Half-buried to her flaming breast

In this bright tree, she makes her nest,

Hundred-sunned Phoenix! when she must

Crumble at length to hoary dust!

Her gorgeous deathbed! her rich pyre

Burnt up with aromatic fire!

Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!

Her birthplace when self-born again!

The mountainless green wilds among,

Here ends she her unechoing song!

With amber tears and odorous sighs

Mourned by the desert where she dies!

George Darley