Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/298

Though you sang a hundred poems,
 Still the best one would be this.
   I can hear it
   'Twixt my spirit
And the earth-noise, intervene—
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!"

But the priest waits for the praying,
 And the choir are on their knees,—
And the soul must pass away in
 Strains more solemn high than these
   Miserere
   For the weary—
Oh, no longer for Catrine,
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!"

Keep my riband! take and keep it,—
 I have loosed it from my hair;^[1]
Feeling, while you overweep it,
 Not alone in your despair,—
   Since with saintly
   Watch, unfaintly,
Out of Heaven shall o'er you lean
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen."

But—but now—yet unremoved
 Up to Heaven, they glisten fast—
You may cast away, Beloved,
 In your future, all my past;
   Such old phrases
   May be praises
For some fairer bosom-queen—
"Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!"

Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
 Faithless, faithless;—praised amiss,
If a tear be on your showing,
 Dropt for any hope of his!

1. She left him the riband from her hair.