Literary Gazette, 24th May 1823, Page 332-333
ORIGINAL POETRY.
INEZ.[1]
Alas, that clouds should ever steal
O'er Love's delicious sky;
That ever Love's sweet lip should feel
Aught but the gentlest sigh!
Love is a pearl of purest hue;
But stormy waves are round it:
And dearly may a woman rue
The hour that first she found it!
The lips that breathed this song were fair
As those the rose-touched Houries wear,
And dimpled by a smile, whose spell
Not even sighs could quite dispel;
And eyes of that dark azure light
Seen only at the deep midnight;
A cheek, whose crimson hues seemed caught
From the first tint by April brought
To the peach-bud; and clouds of curl
Over a brow of blue-veined pearl,
Falling like sunlight, just one shade
Of chesnut on its golden braid.
Is she not all too fair to weep?
Those young eyes should be closed in sleep,
Dreaming those dreams the moonlight brings,
When the dew falls and the nightingale sings:
Dreams of a word, of a look, of a sigh,
Till the cheek burns and the heart beats high.
But Inez sits and weeps in her bower,
Pale as the gleam on the white orange flower,
And counting the wearying moments o'er
For his return, who returns no more!
There was a time—a time of bliss,—
When to have met his Inez' kiss,
To but look in her deep blue eye,
To breathe the air sweet with her sigh,
Young Juan would have urged his steed
With the lightning of a lover's speed,—
Ere she should have shed one single tear.
He had courted danger, and smiled at fear;
But he had parted in high disdain,
And sword to dash from his heart the chain
Of one, who he said was too light to be
Holy and pure in her constancy.
Alas, that woman, not content
With her peculiar element
Of gentle love, should ever try
The meteor spells of vanity!
Her world should be of love alone,
Of one fond heart, and only one.
For heartless flattery, and sighs
And looks false as the rainbow's dyes,
- ↑ This poem appears in The Improvisatrice and Other Poems (1824)
