BELTENEBROS AT MIRAFLORES.

The quickening East climbs to yon star,

That, cradled, rocks herself in morn;

The liquid silver broad'ning far

Dawn drencheth cliff, holt, down and tarn.

The trembling splendors gild the sky,

Breath'd from her tawny champion's lips;

The clear green dews above me lie,

Their lustre the dark eyelash tips

Of Oriana sitting by.

The crested cock‘ mid his stout dames

Crows from the purple-clover hill;

His glossy coat the morn enflames,

And all his leaping heart doth thrill.

His curving tail sickles the plume

That rosy nods against his eye.

Laughs from deep beds of twinkling bloom

The lilied East when wand'reth nigh

My Oriana in the gloom.

The rooks swarm clatt'ring‘ round the tow'rs;

The falcon jingles in the air;

The bursting dawn around him show'rs

A clinging glory of wan glare.

From the green knoll the shouting hunt

With swollen cheeks clangs his alarms;

Mayhap I hear the bristler's grunt:

But where my Oriana charms

The wood, hushed is its ev'ry haunt.

The willowed lake is cool with cloud

Breaking and dimming into shreds,

Which gauze the azure, thinly crowd

The mist-pink West with hazy threads.

A wild swan ruffles o'er the mere

Soft as the drifting of a soul;

A double swan she doth appear

In mirage fixed‘ twixt pole and pole

When Oriana singeth near.

Spring high into the shuddering stars,

O florid sunset, burning gold!

Flash on our eyeballs lurid bars

To beam them with air-fires cold!

The blowing dingles soak with light,

The purple coppice hang with blaze;

But where we stand a meeker white

Bloom on us thro’ the hill's soft haze,

For Oriana stars the night!

Float from the East, O silver world,

Unto the ocean of the West;

And the foam-sparkles upward hurled,

That fringe the twilight's surging crest,

Snatch up and gather‘ round thy brow

In lustrous twine of rosy heat,

And rain on us its starry glow,—

O fragment of the evetide's sheet,—

And Oriana's eyes o'erflow.

O courting cricket, with thy pipe

Now shrill true love thro’ the warm grain

O feathered buds, that nodding stripe

The blue glen's night, sigh love again!

Thou glimmering bird, that aye doth wail

From some wind-wavered branch of snow,

Sweep down the moonlit, hay-sweet dale

Thy bubbled anguish, swooning low,

For Oriana walks the vale!

The moon comes sowing all the eve

With myriad star-grains of her light;

The torrent on the crag doth grieve;

The glittering lake is smooth with night.

O mellow lights that o'er us slide,

O wrinkled woods that ridge the steep,

O bearded stems that billowing glide,

With laughing night-dews happy weep,

For Oriana'll be my bride!