Home, Home afar, where unknown seas forlorn
On gloomy towers and darkling bastions foam,
And lonely eyes look out for one dim sail
That never comes, and men have said there is
No sun.—And though I go forth soon no fear
Shall cling to me, since I a thousand times
Ere this have died, or seemed in truth to die.
For sun by sun the grave insatiable
Has taken to its gloom some fleeting grace,
And day by day some glory old engulfed,
And left me as a house untenanted.
The unfathomed Ocean of wide Death, at most,
And that familiar stream called sleep are one!
Phaon
Enough of this! I need you; nay, turn back
With me, and let one riotous flame of bliss
Forever burn away these withered griefs
As fire eats clean autumnal mountain-sides;
For all this sweet sad-eyed dissuasiveness
Endears like dew the flow’r of final love!
Sappho
Yes, I have died ere this a thousand times;
For on the dusky borderlands of dream
Thro’ the dim twilight of dear summer dawns
So darkly gold, before the hurrying hooves
Of Apollonian pearl throbbed down the wind,
Hearing the Lesbian birds amid green boughs
Where tree and hill and town were touched with fire,
—Hearing, yet hearing not, thro’ all the thin
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