The Evening Sky

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd     With eyes of dazzling bright     Shakes Venus mid the twind boughs of the night;     Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping     From low bough to bough     Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed     Its bloom of snow     By that sole planetary glow.     Venus, avers the astronomer,     Not thus idly dancing goes     Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.     She through ether burns     Outpacing planetary earth,     And ere two years triumphantly returns,     And again wave-like swelling flows,     And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.     This we have not seen,     No heavenly courses set,     No flight unpausing through a void serene:     But when eve clears,     Arises Venus as she first uprose     Stepping the shaken boughs among,     And in her bosom glows     The warm light hidden in sunny snows.     She shakes the clustered stars     Lightly, as she goes     Amid the unseen branches of the night,     Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.     She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows--     And who but knows     How the rejoiced heart aches     When Venus all his starry vision shakes;     When through his mind     Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind,     Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,     The mistress of his starry vision arises,     And the boughs glittering sway     And the stars pale away,     And the enlarging heaven glows     As Venus light-foot mid the twind branches goes.