“So say the foolish!” Say the foolish so, Love?
“Flower she is, my rose” or else, “My very swan is she”
Or perhaps, “Yon maid-moon, blessing earth below, Love,
That art thou!” to them, belike: no such vain words from me.

“Hush, rose, blush! no balm like breath,” I chide it:
“Bend thy neck its best, swan, hers the whiter curve!”
Be the moon the moon: my Love I place beside it:
What is she? Her human self, no lower word will serve.

        It is a common fate - a woman's lot -
    To waste on one the riches of her soul,
        Who takes the wealth she gives him, but cannot
    Repay the interest, and much less the whole.

        As I look up into your eyes and wait
    For some response to my fond gaze and touch,
        It seems to me there is no sadder fate
    Than to be doomed to loving overmuch.

        Are you not kind? Ah, yes, so very kind -
    So thoughtful of my comfort, and so true.
        Yes, yes, dear heart; but I, not being blind,
    Know that I am not loved as I love you.

        One tenderer word, a little longer kiss,
    Will fill my soul with music and with song;
        And if you seem abstracted, or I miss
    The heart-tone from your voice, my worl...

Twin stars, aloft in ether clear,
    Around each other roll alway,
Within one common atmosphere
    Of their own mutual light and day.

And myriad happy eyes are bent
    Upon their changeless love alway;
As, strengthened by their one intent,
    They pour the flood of life and day.

So we through this world's waning night
    May, hand in hand, pursue our way;
Shed round us order, love, and light,
    And shine unto the perfect day.

I wore my heart upon my sleeve,
Tis most unwise, they say, to do -
But then how could I but believe
The foolish thing was safe with you?
Yet, had I known, 'twas safer far
With wolves and tigers, the wild sea
Were kinder to it than you are -
Sweetheart, how you must laugh at me!

Yet am I glad I did not know
That creatures of such tender bloom,
Beneath their sanctuary snow,
Were such cold ministers of doom;
For had I known, as I began
To love you, ere we flung apart,
I had not been so glad a man
As holds his lady to his heart.

And am I lonely here to-night
With empty eyes, the cause is this,
Your face it was that gave me sight,
My heart ran over with your kiss.
Still do I think that what I laid
Before the altar of your face,<...

Come closer, kind, white, long-familiar friend,
    Embrace me, fold me to thy broad, soft breast.
Life has grown strange and cold, but thou dost bend
    Mild eyes of blessing wooing to my rest.
So often hast thou come, and from my side
So many hast thou lured, I only bide
Thy beck, to follow glad thy steps divine.
    Thy world is peopled for me; this world's bare.
    Through all these years my couch thou didst prepare.
Thou art supreme Love - kiss me - I am thine!

'Tis love that blinds my heart and eyes, -
    I sometimes say in doubting dreams, -
    The face that near me perfect seems
Cold Memory paints in fainter dyes.

'Twas but love's dazzled eyes - I say -
    That made her seem so strangely bright;
    The face I worshipped yesternight,
I dread to meet it changed to-day.

As, when dies out some song's refrain,
    And leaves your eyes in happy tears,
    Awake the same fond idle fears, -
It cannot sound so sweet again.

You wait and say with vague annoy,
    "It will not sound so sweet again,"
    Until comes back the wild refrain
That floods your soul with treble joy.

So when I see my love again
    Fades the unquiet doubt away,
    While shines her beauty like the day
Over my...

I must not say that thou wert true,
Yet let me say that thou wert fair.
And they that lovely face who view,
They will not ask if truth be there.

Truth, what is truth? Two bleeding hearts
Wounded by men, by Fortune tried,
Outwearied with their lonely parts,
Vow to beat henceforth side by side.

The world to then was stern and drear;
Their lot was but to weep and moan.
Ah, let then keep their faith sincere,
For neither could subsist alone!

But souls whom some benignant breath
Has charm’d at birth from gloom and care,
These ask no love, these plight no faith,
For they are happy as they are.

The world to them may homage make,
And garlands for their forehead weave.
And what the world can give, they take:
But they bring more tha...

Gay visions for thee 'neath hope's pencil have glowed,
Peace dwells in thy bosom, a guileless abode;
Thou hast seen the bright side of existence alone,
And believ'st every spirit as pure as thine own.
May'st thou never awake from these rapturous dreams,
To find that the world is not fair as it seems,
To feel that the few thou hast loved have deceived,
Have forsaken the heart that confided, believed,
And left it as leafless, as bloomless, and waste
As the rose-tree that's stript by the merciless blast.

When the warm sky of childhood was beaming for me,
My days were all joyous, my heart was all glee;
Affection's best ties round my bosom were spun;
No cloud dimmed the lustre of life's morning sun.
If I watched o'er my favorite rose-bud's decay,
And mourned that ...

Young Love sat in a rosy bower,
Towards the close of a summer day;
At the evening's dusky hour,
Truth bent her blessed steps that way;
        Over her face
        Beaming a grace
Never bestowed on child of clay.

Truth looked on with an ardent joy,
Wondering Love could grow so tired;
Hovering o'er him she kissed the boy,
When, with a sudden impulse fired,
        Exquisite pains
        Burning his veins,
Wildly he woke, as one inspired.

Eagerly Truth embraced the god,
Filling his soul with a sense divine;
Rightly he knew the paths she trod,
Springing from heaven's royal line;
        Far had he strayed
        From his guardian maid,
Perilling all for his rash design.

Still as they went, the tricksy youth
Wande...

The pink rose drops its petals on
The moonlit lawn, the moonlit lawn;
The moon, like some wide rose of white,
Drops down the summer night.
No rose there is
As sweet as this
Thy mouth, that greets me with a kiss.
The lattice of thy casement twines
With jasmine vines, with jasmine vines;
The stars, like jasmine blossoms, lie
About the glimmering sky.
No jasmine tress
Can so caress
Like thy white arms' soft loveliness.
About thy door magnolia blooms
Make sweet the glooms, make sweet the glooms;
A moon-magnolia is the dusk
Closed in a dewy husk.
However much,
No bloom gives such
Soft fragrance as thy bosom's touch.
The flowers blooming now will pass,
And strew the grass, and strew the grass;
The night, like some frail flower, daw...

I

Last night I dreamed this dream: That I was dead;
And as I slept, forgot of man and God,
That other dreamless sleep of rest,
I heard a footstep on the sod,
As of one passing overhead,
And lo, thou, Dear, didst touch me on the breast,
Saying: "What shall I write against thy name
That men should see?"
Then quick the answer came,
"I was beloved of thee."


II

Dear Giver of Thyself when at thy side,
I see the path beyond divide,
Where we must walk alone a little space,
I say: "Now am I strong indeed
To wait with only memory awhile,
Content, until I see thy face, "
Yet turn, as one in sorest need,
To ask once more thy giving grace,
So, at the last
Of all our partings, when the night
Has hidden from my failing si...

O Sweetheart, hear you
Your lover’s tale;
A man shall have sorrow
When friends him fail.

For he shall know then
Friends be untrue
And a little ashes
Their words come to.

But one unto him
Will softly move
And softly woo him
In ways of love.

His hand is under
Her smooth round breast;
So he who has sorrow
Shall have rest.

I

What though the soul be tired
For that to which 'twas fired,
The far, dear, still desired,
Beyond the heaven's scope;
Beyond us and above us,
The thing we would have love us,
That will know nothing of us,
But only bids us hope.


II

It still behooves us ever
From loving ne'er to sever,
To love it though it never
Reciprocate our care;
For love, when freely given,
Lets in soft hints of heaven
In memories that leaven
Black humors of despair.


III

For in this life diurnal
All earthly, gross, infernal,
Conflicts with that eternal
To make its love as lust;
To rot the fairest flower
Of thought which is a power,
All happiness to sour,
And burn our eyes with dust.

I cry your mercy, pity, love! aye, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmasked, and being seen, without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, all, all, be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself, your soul, in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes, the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

Air - "The Sutor's Dochter."




I.

    Wilt thou be my dearie?
    When sorrow wrings thy gentle heart,
    Wilt thou let me cheer thee?
    By the treasure of my soul,
    That's the love I bear thee!
    I swear and vow that only thou
    Shall ever be my dearie.
    Only thou, I swear and vow,
    Shall ever be my dearie.

II.

    Lassie, say thou lo'es me;
    Or if thou wilt no be my ain,
    Say na thou'lt refuse me:
    If it winna, canna be,
    Thou, for thine may choose me,
    Let me, lassie, quickly die,
    Trusting that thou lo'es me.
    Lassie, let me quickly die,
    Trusting that thou lo'es me.

All beauty calls you to me, and you seem,
Past twice a thousand miles of shifting sea,
To reach me. You are as the wind I breathe
Here on the ship’s sun-smitten topmost deck,
With only light between the heavens and me.
I feel your spirit and I close my eyes,
Knowing the bright hair blowing in the sun,
The eager whisper and the searching eyes.

Listen, I love you. Do not turn your face
Nor touch me. Only stand and watch awhile
The blue unbroken circle of the sea.
Look far away and let me ease my heart
Of words that beat in it with broken wing.
Look far away, and if I say too much,
Forget that I am speaking. Only watch,
How like a gull that sparkling sinks to rest,
The foam-crest drifts along a happy wave
Toward the bright verge, the boundary of the wo...

To the heart of trusting childhood life is all a gilded way,
Wherein a beam of sunny bliss forever seems to play;
It roams about delightedly through pleasure's roseate bower,
And gaily makes a playmate, too, of every bird and flower;
Holds with the rushing of the winds companionship awhile,
And, on the tempest's darkest brow, discerns a brightening smile,
Converses with the babbling waves, as on their way they wend,
And sees, in everything it meets, the features of a friend.
"To-day" is full of rosy joy, "to-morrow" is not here:
When, for an uncreated hour, was childhood known to fear?
Not until hopes, warm hopes, its heart a treasure-house have made,
Like summer flowers to bloom awhile, like them, alas, to fade;
Cherished too fondly and too long, for ah! the rich parterre,
...

Love, though it is not chill and cold,
But burning like eternal fire,
Is yet not of approaches bold,
Which gay dramatic tastes admire.
Oh timid love, more fond than free,
In daring song is ill pourtrayed,
Where, as in war, the devotee
By valour wins each captive maid;--

Where hearts are prest to hearts in glee,
As they could tell each other's mind;
Where ruby lips are kissed as free,
As flowers are by the summer wind.
No! gentle love, that timid dream,
With hopes and fears at foil and play,
Works like a skiff against the stream,
And thinking most finds least to say.

It lives in blushes and in sighs,
In hopes for which no words are found;
Thoughts dare not speak but in the eyes,
The tongue is left without a sound.
The pert and fo...