Page:Poems - volume 1 - EBBrowning (1844).pdf/251

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LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.
223

But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you
The world's book, which now reads drily, and sit down with Silence here."

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;
Her friends turned her words to laughter, while her lovers deemed her fair,—
A fair woman—flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station,
Near the statue's white reposing—and both bathed in sunny air!—

With the trees round, not so distant, but you heard their vernal murmur,
And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move;
And the little fountain leaping toward the sun- heart to be warmer,
And recoiling backward, trembling with the too much light above—