I.
If you to me be cold,
Or I be false to you,
The world will go on, I think,
Just as it used to do;
The clouds will flirt with the moon,
The sun will kiss the sea,
The wind to the trees will whisper,
And laugh at you and me;
But the sun will not shine so bright,
The clouds will not seem so white,
To one, as they will to two;
So I think you had better be kind,
And I had best be true,
And let the old love go on,
Just as it used to do.

II.
If the whole of a page be read,
If a book be finished through,
Still the world may read on, I think,
Just as it used to do;
For other lovers will con
The pages that we have passed,
And the treacherous gold of the binding
Will glitter unto the last.
But lids have a lonely look,...

One night a tiny dewdrop fell
Into the bosom of a rose,--
"Dear little one, I love thee well,
Be ever here thy sweet repose!"

Seeing the rose with love bedight,
The envious sky frowned dark, and then
Sent forth a messenger of light
And caught the dewdrop up again.

"Oh, give me back my heavenly child,--
My love!" the rose in anguish cried;
Alas! the sky triumphant smiled,
And so the flower, heart-broken, died.

Live, live with me, and thou shalt see
The pleasures I'll prepare for thee:
What sweets the country can afford
Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board.
The soft sweet moss shall be thy bed,
With crawling woodbine over-spread:
By which the silver-shedding streams
Shall gently melt thee into dreams.
Thy clothing next, shall be a gown
Made of the fleeces' purest down.
The tongues of kids shall be thy meat;
Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat
The paste of filberts for thy bread
With cream of cowslips buttered:
Thy feasting-table shall be hills
With daisies spread, and daffodils;
Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by,
For meat, shall give thee melody.
I'll give thee chains and carcanets
Of primroses and violets.
A bag and bottle thou sha...

Kind, wise, and true as truth's own heart,
A soul that here
Chose and held fast the better part
And cast out fear,
Has left us ere we dreamed of death
For life so strong,
Clear as the sundawn's light and breath,
And sweet as song.
We see no more what here awhile
Shed light on men:
Has Landor seen that brave bright smile
Alive again?
If death and life and love be one
And hope no lie
And night no stronger than the sun,
These cannot die.
The father-spirit whence her soul
Took strength, and gave
Back love, is perfect yet and whole,
As hope might crave.
His word is living light and fire:
And hers shall live
By grace of all good gifts the sire
Gave power to give.
The sire and daughter, twain and one
In quest and goal,

Is anyone sad in the world, I wonder?
    Does anyone weep on a day like this,
With the sun above and the green earth under?
    Why, what is life but a dream of bliss?

With the sun and the skies and the birds above me,
    Birds that sing as they wheel and fly -
With the winds to follow and say they loved me -
    Who could be lonely?    O ho, not I!

Somebody said in the street this morning,
    As I opened my window to let in the light,
That the darkest day of the world was dawning;
    But I looked, and the East was a gorgeous sight

One who claims that he knows about it
    Tells me the Earth is a vale of sin;
But I and the bees and the birds - we doubt it,
    And think it a world worth living in.

Someone says that hearts are fickle...

Sometimes a single hour
Rings thro' a long life-time,
As from a temple tower
There often falls a chime
From blessed bells, that seems
To fold in Heaven's dreams
Our spirits round a shrine;
Hath such an hour been thine?

Sometimes -- who knoweth why?
One minute holds a power
That shadows every hour,
Dialed in life's sky.
A cloud that is a speck
When seen from far away
May be a storm, and wreck
The joys of every day.

Sometimes -- it seems not much,
'Tis scarcely felt at all --
Grace gives a gentle touch
To hearts for once and all,
Which in the spirit's strife
May all unnoticed be.
And yet it rules a life;
Hath this e'er come to thee?

Sometimes one little word,
Whispered sweet and fleet,
That scar...

Who made love to me,
Imagin'd more than woman.

Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be
Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee,
Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth:
And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth.
This last will justify my soft complaint,
While that may serve to lessen my constraint;
And without Blushes I the Youth pursue,
When so much beauteous Woman is in view.
Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain
With thy deluding Form thou giv'st us pain,
While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain.
In pity to our Sex sure thou wer't sent,
That we might Love, and yet be Innocent:
For sure no Crime with thee we can commit;
Or if we shou'd - thy Form excuses it.
For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes
A Snake lies hid beneath th...

I love the warm bare earth and all
That works and dreams thereon:
I love the seasons yet to fall:
I love the ages gone,

The valleys with the sheeted grain,
The river's smiling might,
The merry wind, the rustling rain,
The vastness of the night.

I love the morning's flame, the steep
Where down the vapour clings:
I love the clouds that float and sleep,
And every bird that sings.

I love the purple shower that pours
On far-off fields at even:
I love the pine-wood dusk whose floors
Are like the courts of heaven.

I love the heaven's azure span,
The grass beneath my feet:
I love the face of every man
Whose thought is swift and sweet.

I let the wrangling world go by,
And like an idle breath
Its echoes and its...

THE MAIDEN.

I'VE seen him before me!
What rapture steals o'er me!

Oh heavenly sight!
He's coming to meet me;
Perplex'd, I retreat me,

With shame take to flight.
My mind seems to wander!
Ye rocks and trees yonder,

Conceal ye my rapture.

Conceal my delight!

THE YOUTH.

'Tis here I must find her,
'Twas here she enshrined her,

Here vanish'd from sight.
She came, as to meet me,
Then fearing to greet me,

With shame took to flight.
Is't hope? Do I wander?
Ye rocks and trees yonder,

Disclose ye the loved one,

Disclose my delight!

THE LANGUISHING.

O'er my sad, fate I sorrow,
To each dewy morrow,

Veil'd here from man's sight
By the many mi...

They say there's a high windless world and strange,
Out of the wash of days and temporal tide,
Where Faith and Good, Wisdom and Truth abide,
'Aeterna corpora', subject to no change.
There the sure suns of these pale shadows move;
There stand the immortal ensigns of our war;
Our melting flesh fixed Beauty there, a star,
And perishing hearts, imperishable Love. . . .

Dear, we know only that we sigh, kiss, smile;
Each kiss lasts but the kissing; and grief goes over;
Love has no habitation but the heart.
Poor straws! on the dark flood we catch awhile,
Cling, and are borne into the night apart.
The laugh dies with the lips, 'Love' with the lover.

The sun now sinks behind the woodland green,
And twittering spangles glow the leaves between;
So bright and dazzling on the eye it plays
As if noon's heat had kindled to a blaze,
But soon it dims in red and heavier hues,
And shows wild fancy cheated in her views.
A mist-like moisture rises from the ground,
And deeper blueness stains the distant round.
The eye each moment, as it gazes o'er,
Still loses objects which it mark'd before;
The woods at distance changing like to clouds,
And spire-points croodling under evening's shrouds;
Till forms of things, and hues of leaf and flower,
In deeper shadows, as by magic power,
With light and all, in scarce-perceiv'd decay,
Put on mild evening's sober garb of grey.

Now in the sleepy gloom that blackens round
D...

O eyes! behold your happy Hesperus,
That luckie Load-starre of eternall light,
Left as that sunne alone to comfort vs,
When our worlds sunne is vanisht out of sight.
O starre of starres! fayre Planet mildly moouing,
O Lampe of vertue! sun-bright, euer shyning,
O mine eyes Comet! so admyr'd by louing,
O cleerest day-starre! neuer more declyning.
O our worlds wonder! crowne of heauen aboue,
Thrice happy be those eyes which may behold thee!
Lou'd more then life, yet onely art his loue
Whose glorious hand immortal hath enrold thee!
    O blessed fayre! now vaile those heauenly eyes,
    That I may blesse mee at thy sweet arise.

I.

The love that comes and goes like wind or fire
Hath words and wings wherewith to speak and flee.
But love more deep than passion's deep desire,
Clear and inviolable as the unsounded sea,
What wings of words may serve to set it free,
To lift and lead it homeward? Time and death
Are less than love: or man's live spirit saith
False, when he deems his life is more than breath.

II.

No words may utter love; no sovereign song
Speak all it would for love's sake. Yet would I
Fain cast in moulded rhymes that do me wrong
Some little part of all my love: but why
Should weak and wingless words be fain to fly?
For us the years that live not are not dead:
Past days and present in our hearts are wed:
My song can say no more than love hath said.
...

I
Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth
Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon's mirth,
Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun, and unsure
If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and loved and endure.
A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight,
And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the star-clothed night.
Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories again to be:
Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the waking beyond her be.
A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper awhile,
Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile.
As a maid's mouth laughing with love and subdued for the love's sake, May
Shines and withholds for a little t...

Who know thee, love: thy life be such
    That, ere the year be o'er,
Each one who loves thee now so much,
    Even God, may love thee more!

Fairer than we the woods of May,
Yet sweeter blossoms do not grow
Than these we send you from our snow,
Cramped are their stems by winter's cold,
And stained their leaves with last year's mould;
For these are flowers which fought their way
Through ice and cold in sun and air,
With all a soul might do and dare,
Hope, that outlives a world's decay,
Enduring faith that will not die,
And love that gives, not knowing why,
Therefore we send them unto you;
And if they are not all your due,
Once they have looked into your face
Your graciousness will give them place.
You know they were not born to bloom
Like roses in a crowded room;
For though courageous they are shy,
Loving but one sweet hand and eye.
Ah, should you take them to the rest,
The warmt...

    Elenor Murray and Petain, the major,
    The Promenade des Anglais walked at Nice.
    A cloud was over him, and in her heart
    A growing grief.

    He knew her at the hospital,
    First saw her face among a little group
    Of faces at a grave when rain was falling,
    The burial of a nurse, when Elenor's face
    Was bathed in tears and strained with agony.
    And after that he saw her in the wards;
    Heard soldiers, whom she nursed, say as she passed,
    Dear little soul, sweet soul, or take her hand
    In gratitude and kiss it.

        But as a stream
    Flows with clear water even with the filth
    Of scum, debris that drifts beside the current
    Of crystal water, nor corrupts it, keeps
    Its poisoned, heavier medium ap...

On a bleak, bald hill with a dull world under,
    The dreary world of the Commonplace,
I have stood when the whole world seemed a blunder
    Of dotard Time, in an aimless race.
With worry about me and want before me -
    Yet deep in my soul was a rapture spring
That made me cry to the grey sky o'er me:
    'Oh, I know this life is a goodly thing!'

I have given sweet years to a thankless duty
    While cold and starving, though clothed and fed,
For a young heart's hunger for joy and beauty
    Is harder to bear than the need of bread.
I have watched the wane of a sodden season,
    Which let hope wither, and made care thrive,
And through it all, without earthly reason,
    I have thrilled with the glory of being alive.

And now I stand by the grea...