You'll love me yet! and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry
From seeds of April's sowing.

I plant a heartful now: some seed
At least is sure to strike,
And yield, what you'll not pluck indeed,
Not love, but, may be, like!

You'll look at least on love's remains,
A grave's one violet:
Your look? that pays a thousand pains.
What's death? You'll love me yet!

I


Mother of visions, with lineaments dulcet as numbers
Breathed on the eyelids of love by music that slumbers,
Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,
Thou comest mysterious,
In beauty imperious,
Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know.
Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken,
Helplessly shaken and tossed,
And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken,
My lips, unsatisfied, thirst;
Mine eyes are accurst
With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;
And mine ears, in listening lost,
Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will never awaken.


II


Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,--
Resonant bar upon bar,--
The vibrating lyre
Of the spirit respond...

I look upon the hedgerow flower,
I gaze upon the hedgerow tree,
I walk alone the silent hour,
And think of Mary Appleby.
I see her in the brimming streams,
I see her in the gloaming hour,
I hear her in my Summer dreams
Of singing bird and blooming flower.

For Mary is the dearest bird,
And Mary is the sweetest flower,
That in Spring bush was ever heard--
That ever bloomed on bank or bower.
O bonny Mary Appleby!
The sun did never sweeter shine
Than when in youth I courted thee,
And, dreaming, fancied you'd be mine.

The lark above the meadow sings,
Wood pigeons coo in ivied trees,
The butterflies, on painted wings,
Dance daily with the meadow bees.
All Nature is in happy mood,
The sueing breeze is blowing free.
And o'er t...

What do they know of youth, who still are young?
They but the singers of a golden song
Who may not guess its worth or wonder--flung
Like largesse to the throng.
We only,--young no longer,--old so long
Before its harmonies, stand marvelling--
Oh! we who listen--never they who sing.

Not for itself is beauty, but for us
Who gaze upon it with all reverent eyes;
And youth which sheds its glory luminous,
Gives ever in this wise:--
Itself the joy it may not realise.
Only we know, who linger overlong
Youth that is made of beauty and of song.

Lordly gallants! tell me this
(Though my safe content you weigh not),
In your greatness, what one bliss
Have you gained, that I enjoy not?
    You have honours, you have wealth;
    I have peace, and I have health:
    All the day I merry make,
    And at night no care I take.

Bound to none my fortunes be,
This or that man's fall I fear not;
Him I love that loveth me,
For the rest a pin I care not.
    You are sad when others chaff,
    And grow merry as they laugh;
    I that hate it, and am free,
    Laugh and weep as pleaseth me.

You may boast of favours shown,
Where your service is applied:
But my pleasures are mine own,
And to no man's humour tied.
    You oft flatter, sooth, and feign;
    I such baseness do disdain;<...

What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine
Through my very heart they shine;
And, if my brow gives back their light,
Do thou look gladly on the sight;
As the clear Moon with modest pride
Beholds her own bright beams
Reflected from the mountain's side
And from the headlong streams.

(E. L G.)



Beneath a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
From the files of formal houses,
By the bough the firstling browses,
Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
No man barters, no man sells
Where she dwells.

Upon that fabric fair
"Here is she!"
Seems written everywhere
Unto me.
But to friends and nodding neighbours,
Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
Who descry the times as I,
No such lucid legend tells
Where she dwells.

Should I lapse to what I was
Ere we met;
(Such can not be, but because
Some forget
Let me feign it) none would notice
That where she I know by rote is
Spread a strange and withering change,
Like a drying of the wells
Where s...

How comes it that, at even-tide,
When level beams should show most truth,
Man, failing, takes unfailing pride
In memories of his frolic youth?

Venus and Liber fill their hour;
The games engage, the law-courts prove;
Till hardened life breeds love of power
Or Avarice, Age's final love.

Yet at the end, these comfort not
Nor any triumph Fate decrees
Compared with glorious, unforgot
Ten innocent enormities

Of frontless days before the beard,
When, instant on the casual jest,
The God Himself of Mirth appeared
And snatched us to His heaving breast

And we not caring who He was
But certain He would come again
Accepted all He brought to pass
As Gods accept the lives of men...

Then He withdrew from sight and speech,

Tufted and bunched and ranged with careless art
Here, where the paving-stones are set apart,
Alert and gay and innocent of guile,
The little pansies nod their heads and smile.

With what a whispering and a lulling sound
They watch the children sport about the ground,
Longing, it seems, to join the pretty play
That laughs and runs the light-winged hours away.

And other children long ago there were
Who shone and played and made the garden fair,
To whom the pansies in their robes of white
And gold and purple gave a welcome bright.

Gone are those voices, but the others came.
Joyous and free, whose spirit was the same;
And other pansies, robed as those of old,
Peeped up and smiled in purple, white and gold.

For pansies are, I think, the littl...

Thou lovely bud, with many weeds surrounded,
I once again address thee with a song;
To cheer thee up 'gainst Envy's adder-tongue
That deeply oft thy reputation wounded,
And did thy tender blossom mickle wrong.
But, look thou up!--'tis known in nature's law
That serpents seek the honey-hoarding bee,
Rosemary's sweets the loathsome toad will draw,
So beauty curdles envy's look on thee.
Fain would the peacock's tail the bow express
Which paints the clouds so sweet in April's rain,
And just the same, that imp of ugliness
Mimics thy lovely blossom,--but in vain;
And fain would poison what he can't possess.

I

            The Merrymakers

Among the wintry mountains beside the Northern sea
There is a merrymaking, as old as old can be.

Over the river reaches, over the wastes of snow,
Halting at every doorway, the white drifts come and go.

They scour upon the open, and mass along the wood,
The burliest invaders that ever man withstood.

With swoop and whirl and scurry, these riders of the drift
Will mount and wheel and column, and pass into the lift.

All night upon the marshes you hear their tread go by,
And all night long the streamers are dancing on the sky.

Their light in Malyn's chamber is pale upon the floor,
And Malyn of the mountains is theirs for evermore.

She fancies them a people in saffron and in green,
Dancing for ...

By a blest Husband guided, Mary came
From nearest kindred, Vernon her new name;
She came, though meek of soul, in seemly pride
Of happiness and hope, a youthful Bride.
O dread reverse! if aught 'be' so, which proves
That God will chasten whom he dearly loves.
Faith bore her up through pains in mercy given,
And troubles that were each a step to Heaven:
Two Babes were laid in earth before she died;
A third now slumbers at the Mother's side;
Its Sister-twin survives, whose smiles afford
A trembling solace to her widowed Lord.

Reader! if to thy bosom cling the pain
Of recent sorrow combated in vain;
Or if thy cherished grief have failed to thwart
Time still intent on his insidious part,
Lulling the mourner's best good thoughts asleep,
Pilfering regrets ...

I

That one long dirge-moan sad and deep,
Low, muffled by the solemn stress
Of such emotion as doth steep
The soul in brooding quietness,
Befits our anguished time too well,
Whose Life-march is a funeral knell.

Dirge for a mighty Creed outworn
Its spirit fading from the earth,
Its mouldering body left forlorn:
Weak idol! feeding scornful mirth
In shallow hearts; divine no more
Save to some ignorant pagan poor;

And some who know how by Its light
The past world well did walk and live,
And feel It even now more bright
Than any lamp mere men can give;
So cling to It with yearning faith,
Yet own It almost quenched in death:

While many who win wealth and power
And honours serving at Its shrine,
Rather than lose their w...

    My love is young, so young;
        Young is her cheek, and her throat,
    And life is a song to be sung
        With love the word for each note.

    Young is her cheek and her throat;
        Her eyes have the smile o' May.
    And love is the word for each note
        In the song of my life to-day.

    Her eyes have the smile o' May;
        Her heart is the heart of a dove,
    And the song of my life to-day
        Is love, beautiful love.

    Her heart is the heart of a dove,
        Ah, would it but fly to my breast
    Where lone, beautiful love,
        Has made it a downy nest.

    Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
        My love who is young, so young;
    I have made her a do...