Spinet

Shoaling through twilight to my silver tinglings The great-ruff’d ladies beset with pearl Come out with the gallants in gems of Cadiz In lofty capriols with loud spur-jinglings In Roman galliard and in blithe coranto Learnt in far Otranto Brought home in the galleys of the Earl— Storm-riding galleys of the haughty Earl— To English vallies. They come With reverences stately at meeting In mockeries sedately retreating And stomachers and buckles and rings Shake a maze of jewels to the measured strings, Of trembling jewels.

Ay, moonlight’s fair in yew-clipt alleys, And young Love fledges His shafts ’twixt cypress hedges. Follow the rout, and watch in gentle wind The springing moonbeam of the fountain sway’d Like to a mountain maid Who turns with poisëd jar From bubbling hollow cool.

“Behold, how’t tosses rain of Pleiads hither Into main blackness of the pool— Rings ever shimmering out and sheen reborn; So, thou and I, lady, must die To wake, as echoes wake, of yonder horn With voiceless over the hills of morn. Ah, satin-quilted kirtle, Ah, pearled bosom, Let slip one flake of blossom, Deign but a sprig of myrtle, To the poor Fool, panting on his bended knee!” But silent grow the long swards cedar-shaded Where the young loves were sitting; And lo, in the silver-candled hall The bat is flitting, flitting. The tapestries are dusk upon the wall And the ladies bright, brocaded, All, with their blushes, faded.