8
IDEAL LIKENESSES.
Sappho.
Dark, passionate, though beautiful, the eye
Was as the lightning o the stormy sky
Flashing through darkness; Ii ht and shadow blent
Workings of the mind’s troub ed element:
You did not mark the features, could not trace
What hue, what outline, was upon that face 3
Even while resent, indistinct it seem’d,
Like that 0 which we have but onl dream’d.
You saw a hurried hand fling back t e hair
Like tempest clouds roll’d back upon the air.
Still midnight was beneath, that haughty brow
Darken’d with thoughts to which it would not how—
Midnight, albeit a starry one, the light
Meteor or lanet still was that of night.
She had a an erous gift, though genius be
All this earth oasts of immortality.
It is too heavenly to suit that earth,
The spirit rishes with its fatal birth;
This minglircig fire and water, soul and clay,
The one must make the other one its p
Her heart sufficed not to itself, such min
“'ill shrink such utter loneliness to find,
As it must in its range of burning tho ht,
Will si h above the ruins it has wro t,
False ncies, prejudice, affections vain.
Until it seeks to wear again the chain
