Your future I foresee.  The rose is gay,
      And passing-sweet the violet of the spring: 
    Yet time despoils them, and they soon decay. 
      The lily droops and dies, that lustrous thing;
    The solid-seeming snowdrift melts full fast;
    And maiden’s bloom is rare, but may not last.

    The time shall come, when you shall feel as I;
      And, with seared heart, weep many a bitter tear. 
    But, maiden, grant one farewell courtesy. 
      When you come forth, and see me hanging here,
    E’en at your door, forget not my hard case;
    But pause and weep me for a moment’s space.

    And drop one tear, and cut me down, and spread
      O’er me some garment, for a funeral pall,
    That wrapped thy limbs:  and kiss me—­let the dead
      Be privileged thus highly—­last of all. 
    You need not fear me:  not if your disdain
    Changed into fondness could I live again.

    And scoop a grave, to hide my loves and me: 
      And thrice, at parting, say, ‘My friend’s no more:’ 
    Add if you list, ‘a faithful friend was he;’
      And write this epitaph, scratched upon your door: 
    Stranger, Love slew him.  Pass not by, until
    Thou hast paused and said, ‘His mistress used him ill.’”

    This said, he grasped a stone:  that ghastly stone
      At the mid threshold ’neath the wall he laid,
    And o’er the beam the light cord soon was thrown,
      And his neck noosed.  In air the body swayed,
    Its footstool spurned away.  Forth came once more
    The maid, and saw him hanging at her door.

    No struggle of heart it cost her, ne’er a tear
      She wept o’er that young life, nor shunned to soil,
    By contact with the corpse, her woman’s-gear. 
      But on she went to watch the athletes’ toil,
    Then made for her loved haunt, the riverside: 
    And there she met the god she had defied.

    For on a marble pedestal Eros stood
      Fronting the pool:  the statue leaped, and smote
    And slew that miscreant.  All the stream ran blood;
      And to the top a girl’s cry seemed to float. 
    Rejoice, O lovers, since the scorner fell;
    And, maids, be kind; for Love deals justice well.

IDYLL XXIV.

The Infant Heracles.

      Alcmena once had washed and given the breast
    To Heracles, a babe of ten months old,
    And Iphicles his junior by a night;
    And cradled both within a brazen shield,
    A gorgeous trophy, which Amphitryon erst
    Had stript from Pterelaeus fall’n in fight. 
    She stroked their baby brows, and thus she said: 

      “Sleep, children mine, a light luxurious sleep,
    Brother with brother:  sleep, my boys, my life: 
    Blest in your slumber, in your waking blest!”