Canto 9The Lover’s Complaint
Book 1. Part One - England and Baroda 1883 – 1898
England and Baroda, 1883–1898
Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night
Comes and hides the happy light.
Nature’s vernal darlings dead
5From new founts of life are fed.
Dawn relumes the immortal skies.
Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes?
Love’s sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete
10Haste — a million is to pay —
Lest too soon the allotted day
End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep.
See! the moon from heaven falls.
15In thy bosom’s snow-white walls
Softly and supremely housed
Shut my heart up; keep it closed
Like a rose of Indian grain,
Like that rose against the rain,
20Closed to all that life applauds,
Nature’s perishable gauds,
And the airs that burdened be
With such thoughts as shake the sea.
The Lover’s Complaint
25O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;
Unloose that heavenly tongue,
Interpreter divine of pain;
Utter thy voice, the sister of my song.
Thee in the silver waters growing,
30Arcadian Pan, strange whispers blowing
Into thy delicate stops, did teach
A language lovelier than speech.
Songs to Myrtilla
O plaintive, murmuring reed, begin thy strain;
35O plaintive, murmuring reed.
Nisa to Mopsus is decreed,
The moonwhite Nisa to a swarthy swain.
What love-gift now shall Hope not bring?
Election dwells no more with beauty’s king.
40The wild weed now has wed the rose,
Now ivy on the bramble grows;
Too happy lover, fill the lamp of bliss!
Too happy lover, drunk with Nisa’s kiss!
For thee pale Cynthia leaves her golden car,
45For thee from Tempe stoops the white and evening star.
O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain;
O solace anguish yet again.
I thought Love soft as velvet sleep,
Sweeter than dews nocturnal breezes weep,
50Cool as water in a murmuring pass
And shy as violets in the vernal grass,
But hard as Nisa’s heart is he
And salt as the unharvestable sea.
O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain.
55One morn she came; her mouth
Breathing the odours of the south,
With happy eyes and heaving bosom fain.
She asked for fruit long-stored in autumn’s hold.
These gave I; from the branch dislodged I threw
60Sweet-hearted apples in their age of gold
And pears divine for taste and hue.
And one I saw, should all the rest excel;
But error led my plucking hand astray
And with a sudden sweet dismay
65My heart into her apron fell.
O plaintive, murmuring reed, renew thy strain.
My bleeding heart awhile