(Miss E. F.)
Thy face, which love renews ever with loveliness,
Is known and strange as earth, from night each dawn is new:
Stirred with such restless beauty
As water that wind shadoweth.
How may love snare thy soul, or know the ways thereof?
Subtile as flame it is, and secret as the dews:
Even thus closely folded
Love hath thee not, but followeth.
From change to change, nor surfeiteth his ecstasy
That from so brief a joy desireth new delight,
As tho’ the sweet life in thee
Were fugitive and bodiless.
Nay, love, in thee all change immortal is; nor dies,
Being the soul of thee that pastures on brief joy:
And this earth’s shows mere seeming
In thy clear love’s eternity.