Page images
PDF
EPUB

I will not let thee go.

The stars that crowd the summer skies
Have watched us so below

With all their million eyes,
I dare not let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

Have we not chid the changeful moon,

Now rising late, and now
Because she set too soon,
And shall I let thee go?

I will not let thee go.

Have not the young flowers been content, Plucked ere their buds could blow, To seal our sacrament?

I cannot let thee go.

I will not let thee go.

I hold thee by too many bands:
Thou sayest farewell, and lo!
I have thee by the hands,
And will not let thee go.

8

I FOUND to-day out walking

The flower my love loves best. What, when I stooped to pluck it, Could dare my hand arrest?

Was it a snake lay curling

About the root's thick crown?
Or did some hidden bramble
Tear my hand reaching down?

There was no snake uncurling,
And no thorn wounded me;
"Twas my heart checked me, sighing
She is beyond the sea.

9

A POPPY grows upon the shore,
Bursts her twin cup in summer late:
Her leaves are glaucous-green and hoar,
Her petals yellow, delicate.

Oft to her cousins turns her thought,
In wonder if they care that she

Is fed with spray for dew, and caught
By every gale that sweeps the sea.

She has no lovers like the red,
That dances with the noble corn:

Her blossoms on the waves are shed,
Where she stands shivering and forlorn.

ΙΟ

SOMETIMES when my lady sits by me
My rapture's so great, that I tear

My mind from the thought that she's nigh me,
And strive to forget that she's there.
And sometimes when she is away
Her absence so sorely does try me,

That I shut to my eyes, and assay
To think she is there sitting by me.

I I

LONG are the hours the sun is above,

But when evening comes I go home to my love.

I'm away the daylight hours and more,
Yet she comes not down to open the door.

She does not meet me upon the stair,—

She sits in my chamber and waits for me there.

As I enter the room she does not move :
I always walk straight up to my love;

And she lets me take my wonted place
At her side, and gaze in her dear dear face.
There as I sit, from her head thrown back
Her hair falls straight in a shadow black.

Aching and hot as my tired eyes be,
She is all that I wish to see.

And in my wearied and toil-dinned ear,
She says all things that I wish to hear.
Dusky and duskier grows the room,
Yet I see her best in the darker gloom.
When the winter eves are early and cold,
The firelight hours are a dream of gold.
And so I sit here night by night,

In rest and enjoyment of love's delight.

But a knock at the door, a step on the stair
Will startle, alas, my love from her chair.

If a stranger comes she will not stay:

At the first alarm she is off and away.

And he wonders, my guest, usurping her throne, That I sit so much by myself alone.

I 2

WHO has not walked upon the shore,
And who does not the morning know,
The day the angry gale is o'er,

The hour the wind has ceased to blow?

The horses of the strong south-west
Are pastured round his tropic tent,
Careless how long the ocean's breast
Sob on and sigh for passion spent.

The frightened birds, that fled inland
To house in rock and tower and tree,
Are gathering on the peaceful strand,
To tempt again the sunny sea;

Whereon the timid ships steal out
And laugh to find their foe asleep,
That lately scattered them about,
And drave them to the fold like sheep.

The snow-white clouds he northward chased
Break into phalanx, line, and band:
All one way to the south they haste,
The south, their pleasant fatherland.

From distant hills their shadows creep,
Arrive in turn and mount the lea,
And flit across the downs, and leap
Sheer off the cliff upon the sea;

And sail and sail far out of sight.
But still I watch their fleecy trains,
That piling all the south with light,
Dapple in France the fertile plains.

[blocks in formation]

I told it to the trees,

And to the flowers confest,

And said not one of these

Is like my lily drest;
Nor spathe nor petal dared
Vie with her body bared.

I shouted to the sea,
That set his waves a-prance;
Her floating hair is free,
Free are her feet to dance;
And for thy wrath, I swear
Her frown is more to fear.

And as in happy mood
I walked and sang alone,
At eve beside the wood
I met my love, my own:
And sang to her the song
I had sung all day long.

« PreviousContinue »