Part 15

My skating being done, I loitered home, And sought that day to lose her face again; But love was weaving in his golden loom My story up with hers, and all in vain I strove to loose the threads he spun amain When first we met!

EDMUND GOSSE.

EXPECTATION.

When flower-time comes and all the woods are gay, When linnets chirrup and the soft winds blow, Adown the winding river I will row, And watch the merry maidens tossing hay, And troops of children shouting in their play, And with my thin oars flout the fallen snow Of heavy hawthorn blossom as I go: And shall I see my love at fall of day When flower-time comes?

Ah, yes! for by the border of the stream She binds red roses to a trim alcove, And I shall fade into her summer-dream Of musing upon love,--nay, even seem To be myself the very god of love, When flower-time comes!

EDMUND GOSSE.

IN THE GRASS.

Oh! flame of grass, shot upward from the earth, Keen with a thousand quivering sunlit fires, Green with the sap of satisfied desires And sweet fulfilment of your pale sad birth, Behold! I clasp you as a lover might, Roll on you, bathing in the noonday sun, And, if it might be, I would fain be one With all your odour, mystery, and light, Oh flame of grass!

For here, to chasten my untimely gloom, My lady took my hand and spoke my name; The sun was on her gold hair like a flame; The bright wind smote her forehead like perfume; The daisies darkened at her feet; she came, As spring comes, scattering incense on your bloom Oh flame of grass!

EDMUND GOSSE.

BY THE WELL.

Hot hands that yearn to touch her flower-like face, With fingers spread, I set you like a weir To stem this ice-cold stream in its career,-- And chill your pulses there a little space; Brown hands, what right have you to claim the grace To touch her head so infinitely dear? Learn courteously to wait and to revere, Lest haply ye be found in sorry case, Hot hands that yearn!

But if ye pluck her flowers at my behest, And bring her crystal water from the well, And bend a bough for shade when she will rest, And if she find you fain and teachable, That flower-like face, perchance, ah! who can tell? In your embrace may some sweet day be found, Hot hands that yearn!

EDMUND GOSSE.

A GARDEN PIECE.

Among the flowers of summer-time she stood, And underneath the films and blossoms shone Her face, like some pomegranate strangely grown To ripe magnificence in solitude; The wanton winds, deft whisperers, had strewed Her shoulders with her shining hair outblown, And dyed her robe with many a changing tone Of silvery green, and all the hues that brood Among the flowers;

She raised her arm up for her dove to know That he might perch him on her lovely head; Then I, unseen, and rising on tip-toe, Bowed over the rose-barrier, and lo, Touched not her arm, but kissed her lips instead Among the flowers!

EDMUND GOSSE.

LOVERS' QUARREL.

Beside the stream and in the alder-shade, Love sat with us one dreamy afternoon, When nightingales and roses made up June, And saw the red light and the amber fade Under the canopy the willows made, And watched the rising of the hollow moon, And listened to the water's gentle tune, And was as silent as she was, sweet maid, Beside the stream;

Till with "Farewell!" he vanished from our sight, And in the moonlight down the glade afar His light wings glimmered like a falling star; Then ah! she took the left path, I the right, And now no more we sit by noon or night Beside the stream!

EDMUND GOSSE.

IF LOVE SHOULD FAINT.

If Love should faint, and half decline Below the fit meridian sign, And shorn of all his golden dress, His royal state and loveliness, Be no more worth a heart like thine, Let not thy nobler passion pine, But with a charity divine, Let Memory ply her soft address If Love should faint;

And oh! this laggard heart of mine, Like some halt pilgrim stirred with wine, Shall ache in pity's dear distress, Until the balm of thy caress To work the finished cure combine, If Love should faint.

EDMUND GOSSE.

MY LOVE TO ME.

My love to me is always kind: She neither storms, nor is she pined; She does not plead with tears or sighs, But gentle words and soft replies-- Dear earnests of the thought behind.

They say the little god is blind, They do not count him quite too wise; Yet he, somehow, could bring and bind My love to me.

And sweetest nut hath sourest rind? It may be so; but she I prize Is even lovelier in mine eyes Than good and gracious to my mind. I bless the fortune that consigned My love to me.

W. E. HENLEY.

WITH STRAWBERRIES.

With strawberries we filled a tray, And then we drove away, away Along the links beside the sea, Where wave and wind were light and free, And August felt as fresh as May.

And where the springy turf was gay With thyme and balm and many a spray Of wild roses, you tempted me With strawberries!

A shadowy sail, silent and grey, Stole like a ghost across the bay; But none could hear me ask my fee, And none could know what came to be. Can sweethearts _all_ their thirst allay With strawberries?

W. E. HENLEY.

A FLIRTED FAN.

A flirted fan of blade and gold Is wondrous winsome to behold: It seems an armoured shard to bear The Emperor-Scarab--strange and rare, Metallic, lustrous, jewel-cold. Fawning and fluttering fold on fold And scale on scale, its charm unrolled, Lures, dazzles, slays. It thrills the air, A flirted fan! Ah me, that night ... I cannot scold-- _Ich grolle nicht!_ My grief untold Shall still remain, but I will swear Some Spanish grace, dissembled there, Stood by her stall, she so controlled A flirted fan.

W. E. HENLEY.

IN ROTTEN ROW.

In Rotten Row a cigarette I sat and smoked, with no regret For all the tumult that had been. The distances were still and green, And streaked with shadows cool and wet.

Two sweethearts on a bench were set, Two birds among the boughs were met; So love and song were heard and seen In Rotten Row. A horse or two there was to fret The soundless sand; but work and debt, Fair flowers and falling leaves between, While clocks are chiming clear and keen, A man may very well forget In Rotten Row.

W. E. HENLEY.

THE LEAVES ARE SERE.

The leaves are sere, and on the ground They rustle with an eerie sound, A sound half-whisper and half-sigh-- The plaint of sweet things fain to die, Poor things for which no ruth is found.

With summer once the land was crowned; But now that autumn scatters round Decay, and summer fancies die, The leaves are sere.

Once, too, my thought within the bound Of summer frolicked, like a hound In meadows jocund with July. And now I sit and wonder why, With all my waste of plack and pound, The leaves are sere!

W. E. HENLEY.

WITH A FAN FROM RIMMEL'S.

Go, happy Fan, in all the land The happiest ... seek my lady's hand, And, swinging at her winsome waist, Forget for aye, so greatly graced, The House of Odours in the Strand.

Ivory, with lilac silk outspanned, With ruffling black sedately grand, With bloom of eglantine o'ertraced, Go, happy Fan.

Her kindly heart will understand, Her gentle eyes will grow more bland At sight of you. Away in haste, Dear New Year's gift! Such perfect taste As yours her praises _may_ command ... Go, happy Fan!

W. E. HENLEY.

IF I WERE KING.

If I were king, my pipe should be premier. The skies of time and chance are seldom clear, We would inform them all with bland blue weather. Delight alone would need to shed a tear, For dream and deed should war no more together.

Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king.

But politics should find no harbour near; The Philistine should fear to slip his tether; Tobacco should be duty free, and beer; In fact, in room of this, the age of leather, An age of gold all radiant should appear, If I were king.

W. E. HENLEY.

THE GODS ARE DEAD.

The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows? Living at least in Lempriere undeleted, The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose, Are one and all, I like to think, retreated In some still land of lilacs and the rose.

Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows With sacrificial dance and song were greeted. Once ... long ago: but now the story goes, The gods are dead.

It must be true. The world a world of prose, Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze. Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows Who will may hear the sorry words repeated-- The gods are dead.

W. E. HENLEY.

HER LITTLE FEET.

Her little feet!... Beneath us ranged the sea, She sat, from sun and wind umbrella-shaded, One shoe above the other danglingly, And lo! a Something exquisitely graded, Brown rings and white, distracting--to the knee!

The band was loud. A wild waltz melody Flowed rhythmic forth. The nobodies paraded. And thro' my dream went pulsing fast and free: Her little feet.

Till she made room for some one. It was He! A port-wine-flavoured He, a He who traded, Rich, rosy, round, obese to a degree! A sense of injury overmastered me. Quite bulbously his ample boots upbraided Her little feet.

W. E. HENLEY.

WHEN YOU ARE OLD.

When you are old, and I am passed away-- Passed, and your face, your golden face, is grey-- I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine, Comforting you, a friendly star will shine Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.

So may it be; that so dead Yesterday, No sad-eyed ghost, but generous and gay, May serve your memories like almighty wine, When you are old.

Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway Of death the past's enormous disarray Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign, Live on well pleased! Immortal and divine, Love shall still tend you, as God's angels may, When you are old.

W. E. HENLEY.

MY BOOKS.

These are my books-a Burton old, A Lamb arrayed against the cold In polished dress of red and blue, A rare old Elzevir or two, And Johnson clothed in green and gold.

A Pope in gilded calf I sold, To buy a Sterne of worth untold, To cry, as bibliomaniacs do, "These are my books!"

What though a Fate unkind hath doled But favours few to me, yet bold My little wealth abroad I strew, To purchase acquisitions new, And say by love of them controlled, These are my books.

NATHAN M. LEVY.

MOST SWEET OF ALL.

Most sweet of all the flowers memorial That autumn tends beneath his wasted trees, Where wearily the unremembering breeze Whirls the brown leaves against the blackening wall More sweet than those that summer fed so tall And glad with soft wind blowing overseas; Through all incalculable distances Of many shades that swerve and sands that crawl, Most sweet of all!

When comes the fulness of the time to me As yours is full to-day, O flower of mine? Touched by her hand who evermore shall be, While the slow planets circle for a sign, Till periods flag and constellations fall, Most sweet of all!

"_Love in Idleness._"

THE REDBREAST.

In country lanes the robins sing, Clear-throated, joyous, swift of wing, From misty dawn to dewy eve (Though cares of nesting vex and grieve) Their little heart-bells ring and ring.

And when the roses say to Spring: "Your reign is o'er" when breezes bring The scent of spray that lovers weave In country lanes,

The redbreast still is heard to fling His music forth; and he will cling To Autumn till the winds bereave Her yellowing trees, nor will he leave Till Winter finds him shivering In country lanes.

C. H. LÜDERS.

TO Q(UINTUS) H(ORATIUS) F(LACCUS).

To Q. H. F. the idle band Of poetasters oft has planned Tributes of praise--and penned them, too-- For love of verse that keeps its hue Though dead its language and its land.

True, Pegasus has ever fanned The ether at a bard's command, But ah! how eagerly he flew To Q. H. F.

Not oversweet or overgrand Your poems, Horace, hence your stand Firm in the hearts of men: and few Have gained a place so clearly due, Since Death with unrelenting hand, Took you, H. F.

C. H. LÜDERS.

LOVE IN LONDON.

In London town men love and hate, And find Death tragic soon or late, Just in the old unreasoning way, As if they breathed the warmer day In Athens when the gods were great.

Mine is the town by Thames's spate, And so it chanced I found my fate, One of my fates, that is to say-- In London town.

The whole world comes to those who wait; Mine came and went with one year's date. Pity it made so short a stay! The sweetest face, the sweetest sway That ever Love did consecrate In London town.

JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.

SLEEP.

O happy sleep! that bear'st upon thy breast The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest, Draw near me through the stillness of this place And let thy low breath move across my face, As faint winds move above a poplar's crest.

The broad seas darken slowly in the west; The wheeling sea-birds call from nest to nest; Draw near and touch me, leaning out of space, O happy Sleep!

There is no sorrow hidden or confess'd, There is no passion uttered or suppress'd, Thou can'st not for a little while efface; Enfold me in thy mystical embrace, Thou sovereign gift of God, most sweet, most blest, O happy Sleep!

ADA LOUISE MARTIN.

TO TAMARIS.

It is enough to love you. Let me be Only an influence, as the wandering sea Answers the moon that yet foregoes to shine; Only a sacrifice, as in a shrine The lamp burns on where dead eyes cannot see; Only a hope unknown, withheld from thee, Yet ever like a petrel plaintively, Just following on to life's far twilight line, It is enough.

Go where you will, I follow. _You_ are free. Alone, unloved, to all eternity I track that chance no virtue can divine, When pitiful, loving, with fond hands in mine, You say: "True heart, here take your will of me, It is enough."

THEO. MARZIALS.

WHEN I SEE YOU.

When I see you my heart sings Deep within me for deep love; In my deep heart's dreamiest grove, Your bright image comes like Spring's, Bringing back the murmured dove To the wan dim watersprings. Would my tongue could tell the things Love seems but one echo of When I see you!

Hope lies dying, Time's disproof Strips love's roses to the stings; But the bird that knows its wings Bear it where it will aloof, Sings not, Love, as my heart sings When I see you.

THEO. MARZIALS.

CARPE DIEM.

To-day, what is there in the air That makes December seem sweet May? There are no swallows anywhere, Nor crocuses to crown your hair, And hail you down my garden way.

Last night the full moon's frozen stare Struck me, perhaps; or did you say Really,--you'd come, sweet friend and fair! To-day?

To-day is here:--come! crown to-day With Spring's delight or Spring's despair, Love cannot bide old Time's delay:-- Down my glad gardens light winds play, And my whole life shall bloom and bear To-day.

THEO. MARZIALS.

THE OLD AND THE NEW.

The Old Year goes down-hill so slow And silent that he seems to know The mighty march of time, foretelling His passing: into his eyelids welling Come tears of bitter pain and woe.

The lusty blast can scarce forego His cape about his ears to blow, As feebly to his final dwelling The Old Year goes.

Within the belfry, row on row, The bells are swinging to and fro; Now joyfully the chimes are swelling-- Now solemn and few the notes are knelling-- For here the New Year comes:--and lo! The Old Year goes!

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

SUB ROSA.

Under the rows of gas-jets bright, Bathed in a blazing river of light, A regal beauty sits; above her The butterflies of fashion hover, And burn their wings, and take to flight.

Mark you her pure complexion,-white Though flush may follow flush? Despite Her blush, the lily I discover Under the rose.

All compliments to her are trite; She has adorers left and right; And I confess, here, under cover Of secrecy, I too-I love her! Say naught; she knows it not. 'Tis quite Under the rose.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

"VIOLET."

Violet, delicate, sweet, Down in the deep of the wood, Hid in thy still retreat, Far from the sound of the street, Man and his merciless mood:-

Safe from the storm and the heat, Breathing of beauty and good Fragrantly, under thy hood Violet.

Beautiful maid, discreet, Where is the mate that is meet, Meet for thee-strive as he could- Yet will I kneel at thy feet, Fearing another one should, Violet!

COSMO MONKHOUSE.

O SCORN ME NOT.

O scorn me not, although my worth be slight, Although the stars alone can match thy light, Although the wind alone can mock thy grace, And thy glass only show so fair a face-- Yet--let me find some favour in thy sight.

The proud stars will not bend from their chill height, Nor will the wind thy faithfulness requite. Thy mirror gives thee but a cold embrace. O scorn me not.

My lamp is feeble, but by day or night It shall not wane, and, but for thy delight, My footsteps shall not for a little space Forego the echo of thy tender pace,- I would so serve and guard thee if I might. O scorn me not.

COSMO MONKHOUSE.

TEN THOUSAND POUNDS.

Ten thousand Pounds (a-year), no more Nor less will suit. A man is poor Without his horses and his cows, His city and his country house, His salmon river and his moor;

And many things unmissed before Would be desired and swell the score; But 'tis enough when fate allows Ten thousand Pounds.

But O, my babies on the floor; My wife's blithe welcome at the door; My bread well-earned with sweat of brows; My garden flowerful, green of boughs; Friends, books;-I would not change ye for Ten thousand Pounds.

COSMO MONKHOUSE.

ONE OF THESE DAYS.

One of these days, my lady whispereth, A day made beautiful with summer's breath, Our feet shall cease from these divided ways, Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze And flower together in a mingling wreath.

No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze, No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze; Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith, One of these days.

Ah love, my love! Athwart how many Mays The old hope lures us with its long delays! How many winters waste our fainting faith! I wonder, will it come this side of death, With any of the old sun in its rays, One of these days?

JOHN PAYNE.

LIFE LAPSES BY.

Life lapses by for you and me; Our sweet days pass us by and flee And evermore death draws us nigh; The blue fades fast out of our sky, The ripple ceases from our sea. What would we not give, you and I, The early sweet of life to buy? Alas! sweetheart, that cannot we; Life lapses by.

But though our young days buried lie, Shall love with Spring and Summer die? What if the roses faded be? We in each other's eyes will see New Springs, nor question how or why Life lapses by.

JOHN PAYNE.

BEYOND THE NIGHT.

Beyond the night no withered rose Shall mock the later bud that blows, Nor lily blossom e'er shall blight, But all shall gleam more pure and white Than starlight on the Arctic snows.

Sigh not when daylight dimmer grows, And life a turbid river flows, For all is sweetness-all is light Beyond the night.

Oh, haste, sweet hour that no man knows; Uplift us from our cumbering woes Where joy and peace shall crown the right, And perished hopes shall blossom bright- To aching hearts bring sweet repose Beyond the night.

SAMUEL MINTURN PECK.

AMONG MY BOOKS.

Among my books-what rest is there From wasting woes! what balm for care! If ills appal or clouds hang low, And drooping dim the fleeting show, I revel still in visions rare.

At will I breathe the classic air, The wanderings of Ulysses share; Or see the plume of Bayard flow Among my books.

Whatever face the world may wear- If Lilian has no smile to spare, For others let her beauty blow, Such favours I can well forgo; Perchance forget the frowning fair Among my books.

SAMUEL MINTURN PECK.

I GO MY GAIT.

I go my gait, and if my way Is cheered by song and roundelay, Or if I bear upon my road, Like Issachar, a double load, I sing and bear as best I may.

But lo a rondeau! Can I say, While halting thus my toll to pay Before a stile now _a la mode_, I go my gate?