Last night I wasted hateful hours Below the city’s eastern towers: I thirsted for the brooks, the showers: I roll’d among the tender flowers: I crush’d them on my breast, my mouth: I look’d athwart the burning drouth Of that long desert to the south.[2] Last night, when some one spoke his name,[3] From my swift blood that went and came A thousand little shafts of flame. Were shiver’d in my narrow frame O Love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss, my whole soul thro’ My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.[4]> Before he mounts the hill, I know He cometh quickly: from below Sweet gales, as from deep gardens, blow Before him, striking on my brow. In my dry brain my spirit soon, Down-deepening from swoon to swoon, Faints like a dazzled morning moon. The wind sounds like a silver wire, And from beyond the noon a fire Is pour’d upon the hills, and nigher The skies stoop down in their desire; And, isled in sudden seas of light, My heart, pierced thro’ with fierce delight, Bursts into blossom in his sight. My whole soul waiting silently, All naked in a sultry sky, Droops blinded with his shining eye: I _will_ possess him or will die. I will grow round him in his place, Grow, live, die looking on his face, Die, dying clasp’d in his embrace. [1] 1833. At. [2] This stanza was added in 1842. [3] _Cf._ Byron, _Occasional Pieces_:— They name thee before me A knell to mine ear, A shudder comes o’er me, Why wert thou so dear? [4] _Cf,_ Achilles Tatius, _Clitophon and Leucippe_, bk. i., I: ἡδε (ψυχή) ταραχθεῖσα τῷ φιλήματι πάλλεται, εἰ δὲ μὴ τοῖς σπλάγχνοις ἦν δεδεμένη ἠκολούθησεν ἄν ἑλκυθεῖσα ἄνω τοῖς φιλήμασιν (Her soul, distracted by the kiss, throbs, and had it not been close bound by the flesh would have followed, drawn upward by the kisses.) Œnone