IONE.
I might strive as well to melt to softness the soulless breast
Of some fair and saintly image, carven out of stone,
With my smile, as to stir your heart from its icy rest,
Or win a tender glance from your royal eyes, Ione;
But your sad smile lures me on, as toward some fatal rock:
Is the fond wave drawn, but to break with passionate moan.
Break! to be spurned from its cold feet with a stony shock,
As you would spurn my suppliant heart from your feet, Ione.
Of some fair and saintly image, carven out of stone,
With my smile, as to stir your heart from its icy rest,
Or win a tender glance from your royal eyes, Ione;
But your sad smile lures me on, as toward some fatal rock:
Is the fond wave drawn, but to break with passionate moan.
Break! to be spurned from its cold feet with a stony shock,
As you would spurn my suppliant heart from your feet, Ione.
Ione, there is a grave in the churchyard under the hill,
The villagers shun like the unblest haunt of a ghost,
Dropped there out of a dark spring night, I remember still,
For a foreign ship had anchored that night on the coast;
On the gray stone tablet is written this one word "Rest."
Did he who sleeps underneath seek for it vainly here?
What is the secret hidden there in the buried breast,
The secret deeper sunken by dripping rains each year.
The villagers shun like the unblest haunt of a ghost,
Dropped there out of a dark spring night, I remember still,
For a foreign ship had anchored that night on the coast;
On the gray stone tablet is written this one word "Rest."
Did he who sleeps underneath seek for it vainly here?
What is the secret hidden there in the buried breast,
The secret deeper sunken by dripping rains each year.
When autumn's bending boughs and harvests burdened the ground
An early laborer, chancing to pass that way alone,
An early laborer, chancing to pass that way alone,
