Respite

O Beauty, heal my heart! I lean to thee,
Faint, having supped with horrors: give me drink!
--Red slopes beneath tall pines, ranged tree on tree;
Long cool gray lakes, with iris round the brink
In knightly companies purple and proud;
Birches as altar-candles slender and white;
A late gold sun, traced curiously with cloud;
The spacious splendors of the moon-filled night;
Among the wild-rose crowds, the perfect one;
White sea-gulls like white lilies, on brown bars
That slant athwart blue bays; gulls in the sun
Rising as galaxies of trembling stars:
Lull me awhile, O Beauty, drug my dread!
--To-morrow morn War stands beside my bed.