raiment

seas,

Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the

foam,

Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,

Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,

And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.

forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow

As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment

and tresses yet wasted and torn,

For sins on this wise?

For the glittering of raiment

And the shining of eyes,

Somewhere amid those heights she haply calls me to seek her.

Ah, could I hear her call! could I catch the glimpse of her raiment!

Turn, however, I must, though it seem I turn to desert her;

It awed me, as an angel's might

In raiment of reproachful light.

Her gay looks told my sombre mood

Can rob this body of honour, or denude

This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?

For lo! even now my lady's lips did play

objectionable in the retired closet of a diary, and in the sober

raiment of prose. They do not clutch hold of the memory with the

drowning pertinacity of Watts; neither have they the interest of