Dear indolent, I love to watch you so,
While on the ceiling break the tunes of dances,
And hesitant, harmoniously slow,
You turn the wandering boredom of your glances.
I watch the gas-flares colouring your drawn,
Pale forehead, which a morbid charm enhances,
Where evening lamps illuminate a dawn
In eyes as of a painting that entrances:
And then I say, "She's fair and strangely fresh,
Whom memory crowns with lofty towers above.
Her heart is like a peach's murdered flesh,
Or like her own, most ripe for learned love."
Are you an autumn fruit of sovereign flavour?
A funeral urn awaiting tearful showers?
Of far oases the faint, wafted savour?
A dreamy pillow? or a sheaf of flowers?
I have known deep, sad eyes that yet concealed
No secrets: caskets void of any gem:
Medallions where no sacred charm lay sealed,
Deep as the Skies, but vacuous like them!
It is enough that your appearance flatters,
Rejoicing one who flies from truth or duty.
Your listless, cold stupidity — what matters?
Hail, mask or curtain, I adore your beauty!
