INVITATION.

The ruby my vow desires

For your beauty smiling kind

Is surely incarnadined

By a limpid mirror's fires.

Ice with the flame interchanges,

And your eyes hard with dignity

Bruise the sobbed longing to be

A bauble your hand arranges.

But remember the waters yonder

Cradle the vessels that wander

To the isle in the bright future hidden,

And come while the winter is dark,

To sail our adventurous bark

Madly o'er oceans forbidden.

Contemporary Belgian Poetry Selected and Translated by Jethro Bithell · 第 72 / 232 题