Fragilia Labilia Author:John Addington Symonds Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SNATCHES OF SONG OH, distance blue! My love, like you, Is fair and fancy-free. Oh, distance grey ! My love one day Like you shall sunless be. Oh, summer woods... more » with leafy screen! My love's fresh youth, like yours, is green : Yet winter comes to bare your bower; And years shall crop his fading flower. IKE March when swallows linger long, Like aisles when choiring throats are dumb, Like the lone ouzel from whose home A boy hath stolen the callow young : So grieves my heart ; for thou art not. — March brings the swallow back next year ; Next morn the anthem rises clear; The bird forgets her lonely lot. chapter{Section 4A RHYMING INCATENATURA I CALLED on music to unbind These chains around my spirit twined; I summoned Love to soothe and slake This incommunicable ache, Deep in the marrow of my mind. But Love lay curled, a sleeping snake, And Music had no spell to shake The burden from a bruised soul. Now, fierce as midnight thunder-roll, The hoarse-tongued Sisterhood awake; Furies and fiends, with flaming bowl, Threatening—Thou art so scant of breath, Go forth to meet the second death, Naught but the grave can be thy goal! The fire no time extinguished, The worm that never wearieth, The cry of souls condemned — Too late! We fall, we fall, precipitate! Hell gapes, and high Heaven threateneth! chapter{Section 5IN DREAMLAND WITH a clash and a clangour of pinions, A rush and a rapture of wings, Flew dreams through my spirit's dominions, A drift of ineffable things. Come one with the swoop of a plover, Bent low to my pillow and cried; His lips were the lips of a lover, He sang and my spirit replied. On melody's wings I will bear thee, Dear soul of my soul, to the sea! Fear not, for my spirit is near thee, My plumes they are pa...« less