Hard by the lilied Nile I saw A duskish river-dragon stretched along, The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled With sanguine almandines and rainy p… - Thomas Lovell Beddoes

How many times do I love thee, dear? Tell me how many thoughts there be In the atmosphere Of a new-fall’n year,
Whose white and sable hours appear The latest flake of Eternity:
So many times do I love thee, dear.How many times do I love again? Tell me how many beads there are In a silver chain Of evening rain,
Unravell’d from the tumbling main, And threading the eye of a yellow star:
So many times do I love again.

Why, Rome was naked once, a bastard smudge,
Tumbled on straw, the denfellow of whelps,
Fattened on roots, and, when a-thirst for milk,
He crept beneath and drank the swagging udder
Of Tyber’s brave she-wolf; and Heaven’s Judea
Was folded in a pannier.

Shivering in fever, weak, and parched to sand,
My ears, those entrances of word-dressed thoughts,
My pictured eyes, and my assuring touch,
Fell from me, and my body turned me forth
From its beloved abode: then I was dead;
And in my grave beside my corpse I sat,
In vain attempting to return: meantime
There came the untimely spectres of two babes,
And played in my abandoned body’s ruins;
They went away; and, one by one, by snakes
My limbs were swallowed; and, at last, I sat
With only one, blue-eyed, curled round my ribs,
Eating the last remainder of my heart,
And hissing to himself. O sleep, thou fiend!
Thou blackness of the night! how sad and frightful
Are these thy dreams!