Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
    Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
    Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-
    Your old self whose thoughts went like last year's pansies,
    Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time's estranging,
    I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
    Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
    In which your June has never passed away.
    Walk there awhile among my memories.

A modern Poet addresses his Muse, to whom he has devoted the best Years of his Life

I.

Not here, O belovéd! not here let us part, in the city, but there!
Out there where the storm can enfold us, on the hills, where its breast is made bare:
Its breast, that is rainy and cool as the fern that drips by the fall
In the luminous night of' the woodland where winds to the waters call.
Not here, O belovéd! not here! but there! out there in the storm!

The rush and the reel of the heavens, the tem pest, whose rapturous arm
Shall seize us and sweep us together, resistless as passions seize men,
Through the rocking world of the woodland, with its multitude music, and then,
With the rain on our lips, belovéd! in the heart of the night's wild hell,
One last, long kiss forever, and...

With lyre Orphean, see a Bard explore
    The central caverns of the mornless Night,
    Where never Muse perform'd harmonious rite
    Till now! - and lo! upon the sparry floor,
Advance, to welcome him, each Sister Power,
    Petra, stern Queen, Fossilia, cold and bright,
    And call their Gnomes, to marshal in his sight
    The gelid incrust, and the veined ore,
And flashing gem. - Then, while his songs pourtray
    The mystic virtues gold and gems acquire,
    With every charm that mineral scenes display,
Th' imperial Sisters praise the daring Lyre,
    And grateful hail its new and powerful lay,
    That seats them high amid the Muses' Choir.

1: Petra, and Fossilia, are Personifications of the first and last division of the Fossil Kingdom. The Author of this ...

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
His jointed tongue that lies beneath
A hundred curious rows of teeth;
His seven tufted tails with lots
Of lovely pink and purple spots,
On each of which a pattern stands,
Composed of forty separate bands;
His eyebrows of a tender green;
All these have never yet been seen,
But Scientists, who ought to know,
Assure us that they must be so....
Oh! let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about!

I have a vague remembrance
    Of a story, that is told
In some ancient Spanish legend
    Or chronicle of old.

It was when brave King Sanchez
    Was before Zamora slain,
And his great besieging army
    Lay encamped upon the plain.

Don Diego de Ordonez
    Sallied forth in front of all,
And shouted loud his challenge
    To the warders on the wall.

All the people of Zamora,
    Both the born and the unborn,
As traitors did he challenge
    With taunting words of scorn.

The living, in their houses,
    And in their graves, the dead!
And the waters of their rivers,
    And their wine, and oil, and bread!

There is a greater army,
    That besets us round with strife,
A starving, numberless army,
 ...

In Nature’s pieces still I see
Some error, that might mended be;
Something my wish could still remove,
Alter or add; but my fair love
Was fram’d by hands far more divine
For she hath ev’ry beauteous line;
Yet I had been far happier,
Had Nature, that made me, made her.
Then likeness might, that love creates,
Have made her love what now she hates;
Yet, I confess, I cannot spare
From her just shape the smallest hair;
Nor need I beg from all the store
Pf heaven for her one beauty more.
She hath too much divinity for me;
Ye gods, teach her some more humanity.

Here is a tale the North Wind sang to me:
    Hell hath set Mammon o'er a frozen land,
    Crowned him with gold, put gold into his hand,
And men forsake their God to bow the knee
Again unto this world-old deity
    Whose rule is wheresoe'er man's feet go forth,
    Whether they track the grim and icy North,
Or Afric's scorching sweeps of sandy sea.
About his throne they crawl and curse and weep;
    The tenfold pangs of darkness and of cold
Bite at their hearts, and hound them as they creep,
    Thief-like, to catch his scattered crumbs of gold;--
And over all still burns God's warning scroll:
"What profit it if ye shall lose your soul?"

Were I a king in very truth,
And had a son - a guileless youth -
In probable succession;
To teach him patience, teach him tact,
How promptly in a fix to act,
He should adopt, in point of fact,
A manager's profession.
To that condition he should stoop
(Despite a too fond mother),
With eight or ten "stars" in his troupe,
All jealous of each other!
Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew,
Each member a genius (and some of them two),
And manage to humour them, little and great,
Can govern a tuppenny-ha'penny State!

Both A and B rehearsal slight -
They say they'll be "all right at night"
(They've both to go to school yet);
C in each act MUST change her dress,
D WILL attempt to "square the press";
E won't play Romeo unless
His grand...

Come away, the clouds are high,
Put the flashing needles by.
Many days are not to spare,
Or to waste, my fairest fair!
All is ready. Come to-day,
For the nightingale her lay,
When she findeth that the whole
Of her love, and all her soul,
Cannot forth of her sweet throat,
Sobs the while she draws her breath,
And the bravery of her note
In a few days altereth.

Come, ere she despond, and see
In a silent ecstasy
Chestnuts heave for hours and hours
All the glory of their flowers
To the melting blue above,
That broods over them like love.
Leave the garden walls, where blow
Apple-blossoms pink, and low
Ordered beds of tulips fine.
Seek the blossoms made divine
With a scent that is their soul.
These are soulless. Bring the whit...

Jove may afford us thousands of reliefs,
Since man expos'd is to a world of griefs.

In years to come, when looking o'er
These lines I've penn'd for thee,
I trust that thou shalt ne'er have cause
To think unkind of me.

And if you have, let memory
Try hard to blunt the dart,
And tho' I may deserve the blame,
Let kindness soothe the smart.

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.

Just before the bright cloud the Saviour received,
When about to return to his father in Heaven;
His mission accomplished, his work on earth done,
'Twas then that this parting injunction was given:

"Feed my lambs!" this was said to one of the twelve,
Whom he called to be with him while sojourning here;
"Feed my lambs!" Oh, what love was evinced by those words,
What tender compassion, what fatherly care.

Three times at this meeting the question was asked,
"Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"
And though grieved, yet how truly could Peter reply,
"Lord thou knowest all things, thou know'st I love thee."

Thrice this same Peter his Lord had denied,
And had he not reason reproaches to fear?
Oh, no! for his Saviour had all this forgiven,
He saw his repe...

Nay surelee tha's made a mistak;
Tha'rt aght o' thi element here;
Tha may weel goa an peark up o'th' thack,
Thi bonny wings shakin wi' fear.

Aw should think 'at theease rattlin looms
Saand queer sooart o' music to thee;
An tha'll hardly quite relish th' perfumes
O' miln-greease, - what th' quality be.

Maybe tha'rt disgusted wi' us,
An thinks we're a low offald set,
But tha'rt sadly mistaen if tha does,
For ther's hooap an ther's pride in us yet.

Tha wor nobbut a worm once thisen,
An as humble as humble could be;
An tho we nah are like tha wor then,
We may yet be as nobby as thee.

Tha'd to see thi own livin when young,
An when tha grew up tha'd to spin;
An if labor like that wornt wrong,
Tha con hardly call wayvin 'a sin.'...

"What's this?" I pondered. "Have I slept?
Or can I have been drinking?"
But soon a gentler feeling crept
Upon me, and I sat and wept
An hour or so, like winking.

"No need for Bones to hurry so!"
I sobbed. "In fact, I doubt
If it was worth his while to go,
And who is Tibbs, I'd like to know,
To make such work about?

"If Tibbs is anything like me,
It's POSSIBLE," I said,
"He won't be over-pleased to be
Dropped in upon at half-past three,
After he's snug in bed.

"And if Bones plagues him anyhow,
Squeaking and all the rest of it,
As he was doing here just now,
I prophesy there'll be a row,
And Tibbs will have the best of it!"

Then, as my tears could never bring
The friendly Phantom back,
It seemed to me the pro...

There it stands, though alas, what a little of her
Shows in its cold white look!
Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her
Voice like the purl of a brook;
Not her thoughts, that you read like a book.

It may stand for her once in November
When first she breathed, witless of all;
Or in heavy years she would remember
When circumstance held her in thrall;
Or at last, when she answered her call!

Nothing more. The still marble, date-graven,
Gives all that it can, tersely lined;
That one has at length found the haven
Which every one other will find;
With silence on what shone behind.

St. Juliot: September 8, 1916.

When I remember that the day will come
    For this our love to quit his land of birth,
    And bid farewell to all the ways of earth
With lips that must for evermore be dumb,

Then creep I silent from the stirring hum,
    And shut away the music and the mirth,
    And reckon up what may be left of worth
When hearts are cold and love's own body numb.

Something there must be that I know not here,
Or know too dimly through the symbol dear;
    Some touch, some beauty, only guessed by this---
If He that made us loves, it shall replace,
Beloved, even the vision of thy face
    And deep communion of thine inmost kiss.

When the firmament quivers with daylight's young beam,
And the woodlands awaking burst into a hymn,
And the glow of the sky blazes back from the stream,
How the bright ones of heaven in the brightness grow dim.

Oh! 'tis sad, in that moment of glory and song,
To see, while the hill-tops are waiting the sun,
The glittering band that kept watch all night long
O'er Love and o'er Slumber, go out one by one:

Till the circle of ether, deep, ruddy, and vast,
Scarce glimmers with one of the train that were there;
And their leader the day-star, the brightest and last,
Twinkles faintly and fades in that desert of air.

Thus, Oblivion, from midst of whose shadow we came,
Steals o'er us again when life's twilight is gone;
And the crowd of bright names, in the heaven...