Part 2

My days are full of pleasant memories Of all those women sweet Whom I have known! How tenderly their eyes Flash thro’ the days--too fleet!-- Which long ago went by with sun and rain, Flowers, or the winter snow; And still thro’ memory’s palace-halls are fain In rustling robes to go! Or wed, or widow’d, or with milkless breasts, Around those women stand, Like mists that linger on the mountain crests Rear’d in a phantom land; And love is in their mien and in their look, And from their lips a stream Of tender words flows, smooth as any brook, And softer than a dream: And one by one, holding my hands, they say Things of the years agone; And each head will a little turn away, And each one still sigh on, Because they think such meagre joy we had; For love was little bold, And youth had store, and chances to be glad, And squander’d so his gold. Blue eyes, and gray, and blacker than the sloe, And dusk and golden hair, And lips that broke in kisses long ago, Like sun-kiss’d flowers are there; And warm fireside, and sunny orchard wall, And river-brink and bower, And wood and hill, and morning and day-fall, And every place and hour! And each on each a white unclouded brow Still as a sister bends, As they would say, “Love makes us kindred now, Who sometime were his friends.”

THOMAS ASHE.

THE GUEST.

Lights Love, the timorous bird, to dwell, While summer smiles, a guest with you? Be wise betimes and use him well, And he will stay in winter too: For you can have no sweeter thing Within the heart’s warm nest to sing.

The blue-plumed swallows fly away, Ere autumn gilds a leaf; and then Have wit to find another day The little clay-built house again: He will not know, a second spring, His last year’s nest, if Love take wing.

THOMAS ASHE.

THE SECRET.

FROM THE FRENCH OF FÉLIX ARVERS.

My life its secret and its mystery has, A love eternal in a moment born; There is no hope to help my evil case, And she knows naught who makes me thus forlorn.

And I unmark’d shall ever by her pass Aye at her side, and yet for aye alone; And I shall waste my bitter days, alas! And never dare to claim my love my own!

And she whom God has made so sweet and dear, Will go her way, distraught, and never hear This murmur round her of my love and pain;

To austere duty true, will go her way, And read these verses full of her, and say, “Who is this woman that he sings of then?”

THOMAS ASHE.

IF LOVE COULD LAST!

If Love could last, if Love could last, The Future be as was the Past, Nor faith and fondness ever know The chill of dwindling afterglow, Oh, then we should not have to long For cuckoo’s call and throstle’s song, But every season then would ring With rapturous voices of the spring. In budding brake and grassy glade The primrose then would never fade, The windflower flag, the bluebell haze Faint from the winding woodland ways, But vernal hopes chase wintry fears, And happy smiles and happier tears Be like the sun and clouds at play,-- If Love could last!

If Love could last, the rose would then Not bloom but once, to fade again. June to the lily would not give A life less fair than fugitive, But flower and leaf and lawn renew Their freshness nightly with the dew. In forest dingles, dim and deep, Where curtained noonday lies asleep, The faithful ringdove ne’er would cease Its anthem of abiding peace. All the year round we then should stray Through fragrance of the new-mown hay, Or sit and ponder old-world rhymes Under the leaves of scented limes. Careless of time, we should not fear The footsteps of the fleeting year, Or, did the long warm days depart, ’Twould still be summer in our heart,-- Did Love but last!

Did Love but last, no shade of grief For fading flower, for falling leaf, For stubbles whence the piled-up wain Hath borne away the golden grain, Leaving a load of loss behind, Would shock the heart and haunt the mind. With mellow gaze we then should see The ripe fruit shaken from the tree, The swallows troop, the acorns fall, The last peach redden on the wall, The oasthouse smoke, the hopbine burn, Knowing that all good things return To Love that lasts!

If Love could last, who then would mind The freezing rack, the unfeeling wind, The curdling pool, the shivering sedge, The empty nest in leafless hedge, Brown dripping bents and furrows bare, The wild geese clamouring through the air, The huddling kine, the sodden leaves, Lack-lustre dawns and clammy eves? For then through twilight days morose We should within keep warm and close, And by the friendly fireside blaze Talk of the ever-sacred days When first we met, and felt how drear Were life without the other near; Or, too at peace with bliss to speak, Sit hand in hand, and cheek to cheek,-- If Love could last!

YET LOVE CAN LAST.

Yet Love _can_ last, yes, Love can last, The Future be as was the Past, And faith and fondness never know The chill of dwindling afterglow, If to familiar hearth there cling The virgin freshness of the spring, And April’s music still be heard In wooing voice and winning word. If when autumnal shadows streak The furrowed brow, the wrinkled cheek, Devotion, deepening to the close, Like fruit that ripens, tenderer grows; If, though the leaves of youth and hope Lie thick on life’s declining slope, The fond heart, faithful to the last, Lingers in love-drifts of the past; If, with the gravely shortening days, Faith trims the lamp, Faith feeds the blaze, And Reverence, robed in wintry white, Sheds fragrance like a summer night,-- Then Love can last!

ALFRED AUSTIN.

A JOURNEY.

The same green hill, the same blue sea,-- Yet, love, thou art no more to me!

The same long reach of yellow sand,-- Where is the touch of thy soft hand?

The same wide open arch of sky,-- But, sweetheart, thou no more art nigh!

God love thee and God keep thee strong: I breathe that pure prayer through my song!

I send my soul across the waste To seek and find thy soul in haste!

Across the inland woods and glades, And through the leaf-laced checkered shades,

My spirit passes, seeking thee; No more I tarry by the sea.

For where thou art am I for ever; Mere space and time divide us never.

GEORGE BARLOW.

IF ONLY THOU ART TRUE.

If only a single Rose is left, Why should the summer pine? A blade of grass in a rocky cleft; A single star to shine. --Why should I sorrow if all be lost, If only thou art mine?

If only a single Bluebell gleams Bright on the barren heath, Still of that flower the summer dreams, Not of his August wreath. --Why should I sorrow if thou art mine, Love, beyond change and death?

If only once on a wintry day The sun shines forth in the blue, He gladdens the groves till they laugh as in May And dream of the touch of the dew. --Why should I sorrow if all be false, If only thou art true?

GEORGE BARLOW.

THE ECSTASY OF THE HAIR.

I’d send a troop of kisses to entangle And lose themselves in labyrinths of hair,-- Thy deep dark night of hair with stars to spangle, And each, a firefly’s tiny lamp, to dangle Amid the tresses of that forest fair. A perfume seems to blossom into air; The ecstasy that hangs about the tresses, Their blush, their overflow, their breath, their bloom; A wind that gently lifts them and caresses, And wings itself and floats about the room; The beauty that the flame of youth expresses, A tender fire, too tender to consume, Which, seizing all my soul, pervades, possesses, And mingleth in a subtly sweet perfume.

GEORGE BARLOW.

THE NIGHT WATCHES.

Come, oh, come to me, voice or look, or spirit or dream, but, oh, come now; All these faces that crowd so thick are pale and cold and dead--Come thou, Scatter them back to the ivory gate and be alone and rule the night.

Surely all worlds are nothing to Love, for Love to flash thro’ the night and come; Hither and thither he flies at will, with thee he dwelleth--there is his home. Come, O Love, with a voice, a message; haste, O Love, on thy wings of light.

Love, I am calling thee, Love, I am calling; dost thou not hear my crying, sweet? Does not the live air throb with the pain of my beating heart, till thy heart beat?-- Surely momently thou wilt be here, surely, O sweet Love, momently.

No, my voice would be all too faint, too faint, when it reached Love’s ear, tho’ the night is still, Fainter ever and fainter grown o’er hill and valley and valley and hill, There where thou liest quietly sleeping, and Love keeps watch as the dreams flit by.

Ah, my thought so subtle and swift, can it not fly till it reach thy brain, And whisper there some faint regret for a weary watch and a distant pain?-- Not too loud, to awake thy slumber; not too tender, to make thee weep;

Just so much for thy head to turn on the pillow so, and understand Dimly, that a soft caress has come long leagues from a weary land, Turn and half remember and smile, and send a kiss on the wings of sleep.

H. C. BEECHING.

IN A ROSE GARDEN.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, We will not care at all. It will not matter then a whit, The honey or the gall. The summer days that we have known Will all forgotten be and flown; The garden will be overgrown Where now the roses fall.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, We will not mind the pain. The throbbing crimson tide of life Will not have left a stain. The song we sing together, dear, The dream we dream together here, Will mean no more than means a tear Amid a summer rain.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, The grief will all be o’er; The sea of care will surge in vain Upon a careless shore. These glasses we turn down to-day Here at the parting of the way: We will be wineless then as they, And will not mind it more.

A hundred years from now, dear heart, We’ll neither know nor care What came of all life’s bitterness Or followed love’s despair. Then fill the glasses up again And kiss me through the rose-leaf rain; We’ll build one castle more in Spain, And dream one more dream there.

JOHN BENNETT.

I CHARGE YOU, O WINDS OF THE WEST.

I charge you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove, That ye blow o’er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the dawn, O tears of the star of the morn, That ye fall at the feet of my love, with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the air, O birds flying home to your nest, That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair, That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels and droops with despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee, A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish the flames of love’s fire, Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it and breaks its desire.

I rise like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core, The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep, My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne’er soothed into sleep.

The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf, But love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.

MATHILDE BLIND.

SONG.

Thou walkest with me as the spirit-light Of the hushed moon, high o’er a snowy hill, Walks with the houseless traveller all the night, When trees are tongueless and when mute the rill. Moon of my soul, O phantom of delight, Thou walkest with me still.

The vestal flame of quenchless memory burns In my soul’s sanctuary. Yea, still for thee My bitter heart hath yearned, as moonward yearns Each separate wave-pulse of the clamorous sea: My moon of love, to whom for ever turns That life that aches through me.

MATHILDE BLIND.

CÆLI.

If stars were really watching eyes Of angel armies in the skies, I should forget all watchers there, And only for your glances care.

And if your eyes were really stars, With leagues that none can mete for bars To keep me from their longed-for day, I could not feel more far away.

F. W. BOURDILLON.

LOVE IN THE HEART.

Love in the heart is as a nightingale That sings in a green wood; And none can pass unheeding there, nor fail Of impulses of good.

Though cruel brief be Love’s bright hour of song, Yet let him sing his fill! For other hearts the echoes shall prolong When Love’s own voice is still.

F. W. BOURDILLON.

I WILL NOT LET THEE GO.

I will not let thee go. Ends all our month-long love in this? Can it be summed up so, Quit in a single kiss? I will not let thee go.

I will not let thee go. If thy words’ breath could scare thy deeds, As the soft south can blow And toss the feathered seeds, Then might I let thee go.

I will not let thee go. Had not the great sun seen, I might; Or were he reckoned slow To bring the false to light, Then might I let thee go.

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.

ROBERT BRIDGES.

LONG ARE THE HOURS.

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, dead 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 on 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.

ROBERT BRIDGES.

APPARITIONS.

I.

Such a starved bank of moss Till, that May morn, Blue ran the flash across: Violets were born!

II.

Sky--what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!

III.

World--how it walled about Life with disgrace Till God’s own smile came out: That was thy face.

ROBERT BROWNING.

PORPHYRIA’S LOVER.

The rain set early in to-night, The sullen wind was soon awake; It tore the elm-tops down for spite, And did its worst to vex the lake. I listened with heart fit to break,

When glided in Porphyria; straight She shut the cold out and the storm, And kneeled and made the cheerless grate Blaze up, and all the cottage warm; Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth, white shoulder bare, And all her yellow hair displaced, And, stooping, made my cheek lie there, And spread o’er all her yellow hair,--

Murmuring how she loved me,--she Too weak for all her heart’s endeavour, To set its struggling passion free From pride, and vainer ties dissever, And give herself to me for ever.

But passion sometimes would prevail, Nor could to-night’s gay feast restrain A sudden thought of one so pale For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes Happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise Made my heart swell, and still it grew While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and good: I found A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she; I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily oped her lids: again Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress About her neck; her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before. Only this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still: The smiling rosy little head, So glad it has its utmost will, That all it scorned at once is fled, And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how Her darling one wish would be heard. And thus we sit together now, And all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word.

ROBERT BROWNING.

ROBIN’S SONG.

WARWICKSHIRE, 16--.

Up, up, my heart! up, up, my heart, This day was made for thee! For soon the hawthorn spray shall part, And thou a face shalt see That comes, O heart, O foolish heart, This way to gladden thee.

The grass shows fresher on the way That soon her feet shall tread-- The last year’s leaflet curled and gray, I could have sworn was dead, Looks green, for lying in the way I know her feet will tread.

What hand yon blossom-curtain stirs, More light than errant air? I know the touch--’tis hers, ’tis hers! She parts the thicket there-- The flowerèd branch her coming stirs Hath perfumed all the air.

The springs of all forgotten years Are waked to life anew-- Up, up, my eyes, nor fill with tears As tender as the dew-- I knew her not in all those years; But life begins anew.

Up, up, my heart! up, up, my heart, This day was made for thee! Come, Wit, take on thy nimblest art, And win Love’s victory-- What now? Where art thou, coward heart? Thy hour is here--and She!

H. C. BUNNER.

THE HOUR OF SHADOWS.

Upon that quiet day that lies Where forest branches screen the skies, The spirit of the eve has laid A deeper and a dreamier shade; And winds that through the tree-tops blow Wake not the silent gloom below.

Only the sound of far-off streams, Faint as our dreams of childhood’s dreams, Wandering in tangled pathways crost, Like woodland truants strayed and lost, Their faint, complaining echoes roam, Threading the forest toward their home.

O brooks, I too have gone astray, And left my comrade on the way-- Guide me through aisles where soft you moan, To some sad spot you know alone, Where only leaves and nestlings stir, And I may dream, and dream of Her.

H. C. BUNNER.

CARNATIONS IN WINTER.

Your carmine flakes of bloom to-night The fire of wintry sunsets hold; Again in dreams you burn to light A fair Canadian garden old.

The blue north summer over it Is bland with long ethereal days; The gleaming martins wheel and flit Where breaks your sun down orient ways.

There, when the gradual twilight falls, Through quietudes of dusk afar, Hermit, antiphonal hermit calls From hills below the first pale star.

Then, in your passionate love’s foredoom Once more your spirit stirs the air, And you are lifted through the gloom To warm the coils of her dark hair.

BLISS CARMAN.

THE EAVESDROPPER.

In a still room at hush of dawn, My Love and I lay side by side And heard the roaming forest wind Stir in the paling autumn-tide.

I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad Because the round day was so fair; While memories of reluctant night Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.

Outside, a yellow maple-tree, Shifting upon the silvery blue With small innumerable sound, Rustled to let the sunlight through.

The livelong day the elvish leaves Danced with their shadows on the floor; And the lost children of the wind Went straying homeward by our door.

And all the swarthy afternoon We watched the great deliberate sun Walk through the crimsoned hazy world, Counting his hilltops one by one.

Then as the purple twilight came And touched the vines along our eaves, Another shadow stood without And gloomed the dancing of the leaves.

The silence fell on my Love’s lips; Her great brown eyes were veiled and sad With pondering some maze of dream, Though all the splendid year was glad.

Restless and vague as a gray wind Her heart had grown, she knew not why. But hurrying to the open door, Against the verge of western sky

I saw retreating on the hills, Looming and sinister and black, The stealthy figure swift and huge Of One who strode and looked not back.

BLISS CARMAN.

THE IMPOSSIBLE SHE.

Far away hangs an apple that ripens on high The latest-born child of old sun-blind July, Till the summer’s warm kiss as he wooes overhead Turns its sour heart to sweetness, its wan cheek to red. But it is not for you, and it is not for me, Nay, it is not for any who here may be; For its dawning red sweetness, That rounds to completeness Grows moist for the lips that we never may see.