University of Virginia Library


241

XIX. “YET MORE SWEET”

Let me just watch thine eyes. If nothing more,
Yet let this one thing be!
Is it forbidden to the throbbing shore
To watch the clear-eyed sea?
May not the green woods, dark and full of woe,
Watch, once, their bright birds' flight?—
Oh let me love thee, watch thee, guard thee, so:
As guards its stars the night.
Be thou one star within my dreary night;
One sweet wave on my sea;
One woman with superb eyes full of light,
Light ever turned on me!

242

If all the world of women came and fell
One by one at my feet
And offered me strange gifts too sweet to tell,
It would be yet more sweet,
O love, to me to watch thy clear brown eyes
(Though no gift else were ours!)
Than to possess all hearts beneath the skies,
And win those hearts' best flowers.