To the Same

When, lady of the merry heart and eye! Saw'st thou a night more beautiful than this? When did the breeze more amorously sigh? When did the cooing stream more softly kiss The green and yielding bank? and when did star Gem, with its diamond light, a calmer lake, O'er which the tones of some unseen guitar, Wing'd as a seraph, their bright voyage take? Is't not the hour for lovers' souls to breathe A mingled incense at each other's shrine? Is't not the hour for sunny hopes to wreathe Their gayest garlands for a brow like thine? Ah! turn not from me that love-lighted glance,― Give sages life's dull prose, ours be its blest romance!