European Elegies/Autumn (1)/Pearl
8.PEARL
It was a pearl to kindle kings,
Chastely mounted in mellow gold;
Never in Orient journeyings
Did I its priceless peer behold .
There lurked within its lambent springs
Soft, lustrous magic manifold;
And when I judged of precious things,
Its beauty paramount I told.
Alas! One day it slipped my hold:
I lost it in the churchyard grass
And groan because the graveyard mould
Mars graces that the world surpass.
Chastely mounted in mellow gold;
Never in Orient journeyings
Did I its priceless peer behold .
There lurked within its lambent springs
Soft, lustrous magic manifold;
And when I judged of precious things,
Its beauty paramount I told.
Alas! One day it slipped my hold:
I lost it in the churchyard grass
And groan because the graveyard mould
Mars graces that the world surpass.
Yearning with many a bitter sigh
In that green waste I wait; and long
The lost delights of days gone by
Before black sorrow choked my song
Arise in anguish to my eye,
And through my memory's chambers throng;
Till underneath that quiet sky
There stabs a dolour doubly strong
That her fair flesh should lie among
The sullen depths of sodden clays—
Ah earth, dank earth, you do me wrong
To rot the roses from her face!
In that green waste I wait; and long
The lost delights of days gone by
Before black sorrow choked my song
Arise in anguish to my eye,
And through my memory's chambers throng;
Till underneath that quiet sky
There stabs a dolour doubly strong
That her fair flesh should lie among
The sullen depths of sodden clays—
Ah earth, dank earth, you do me wrong
To rot the roses from her face!
From the Middle English.