Love-Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

DAISY'S THIMBLE.

I

O dear small thimble
Which fingers nimble
Have used so daintily, scores of times,
I hold you lightly,
Shining so brightly,
And think of your wearer in far new climes,
When these same fingers
O'er which love lingers,
Will turn the pages no more of my rhymes.

II

These hands, here growing
Like blossoms blowing,
So white and tender, so soft and still,
Youth's golden flowers
In life's first hours,
In meadow and coppice, by stream and rill,
Have gathered: now never
For ever, for ever,
Our English roses their touch will thrill.

III

Good-bye, good-bye to you,
My verses sigh to you,
O dainty finger that wearest the shell,—
The silver agile
Dear thimble fragile
Whose daily glitter I know so well;
See how I take you
For her sweet sake, you
Small silver token, which unseen fell.

IV

Fell from her finger,
Fated to linger
Henceforth for ever in secret lair;
Yea, when the owner,
Unconscious donor,
Is breathing the arid and Eastern air,
Thou shalt be sign to me,
Breathe a soft line to me,
Memory of hours and flowers that were.

V

The fingers that used thee,
Daintily bruised thee
With soft sweet pressure of snow-white tips,
Will no more glitter
Amid the litter,
The spangled litter of work-room snips—
They soon the roses
That Love discloses
Must gather, growing as grow the lips.

VI

The sacred flowers
Of Love's deep bowers
They soon shall gather, those fingers dear;
They pass away from us,
A sun-sweet ray from us,
To lands where suns strike rapid and sheer;
They leave us, grieve us,
Sadden, bereave us,
Just at the dawn of the rosebud year.

VII

O dawning rosebud,
Whiter than snows bud,
Pass forth and gladden the strange far land;
Leave our pale bowers
And storm-swept flowers
Behind, and gather in white quick hand
The fairy legions
Of blossoms in regions
Unknown, untrodden, a stranger strand.

VIII

Thine hands have lingered,
Plucked and have fingered
English hair-bells, whose stems were slight;
English roses
And hedge-side posies
Which laughed, upgazing with laughing might
Into the fairer
Eyes, bluer and rarer,
Which pierced the blossoms like star-rays bright.

IX

These were the flowers
Of tender hours
Of girlhood, laughing as laughed the maid:—
These were the first days,
Free from love's thirst days,
Soft happy moments while love delayed
His ardent coming,
Nor yet the humming
Of his swift wings over the young winds strayed.

X

This was the May-time
Of growth and of playtime,
The season wherein the plumes were shaped
That, snow-white pinions,
In new dominions,
Snow-white, or lovely and rainbow-draped,
Shall soon remind us
That time did blind us
While one more blossom its sheath escaped.

XI

A blossom growing
Without our knowing,
To shine, full-petalled, in other fields;
To gleam, bright-golden,
Not in the olden
Sad land which yearly its tribute yields
To India's younger
Yearning and hunger,
A rose to blazon the flag she wields.

XII

If ever returning,
The full rose, burning,
Bright, full-grown, beautiful, lights our shore,
What will it say to us,
Soft yea or nay to us;
Will it be mindful of days before?
Will it forget them,
Leave or regret them,
Will there be one look soft as of yore?

XIII

Will there be one look,
Star-look or sun-look,
Sweet as the smiles were, tender of old,
A soft smile starry
For hope to carry
Upward in arms that clasp it and fold
The dear look beaming,
Lightening and gleaming,
In from our chill land's vapour and cold?

XIV

If ever again to us,
Thrice welcome then to us,
The rose returneth, ah! shall we know
The same shape older,
The curve of shoulder,
The innocent young lips? Will there be glow
Of recognition,
O rosebud vision—
Ah, who can tell us?—time's waves fast flow.

XV

Yea, faster even
Than ripples in heaven
Of love's fair ocean, love's moonlit streams;
Fierce time advances
With surge-white lances,
Across life's furrows his huge wave gleams;
His ponderous massive
Charge, stubborn and passive,
Bears force more cogent than love's frail dreams.

XVI

So rose returning
With petals burning
Clear-shaped, love-reddened, across the foam,
We may not know thee,
May pass, forego thee;
A foreign blossom not formed at home
Thou then may'st seem to us,
A distant dream to us,
No straight stalk fashioned in English loam.

XVII

So it may be then!
What shall we see then?
The English Daisy—or some strange stem
With new grafts clinging
Not of our bringing,
And our hands having no part in them?
Nor our hearts knowing
The weird buds growing,
Whose garish colours our eyes contemn.

XVIII

O Daisy simple,
With sweet smile-dimple,
Oh, keep thine eyes on thine English name:—
Be ever Daisy
Through Indian hazy
Strange summers when heaven one widelit flame
Burns fierce above thee;
So shall we love thee
Though ceasing more of thy life to claim.

XIX

Be English rosebud,
Through fierce sky glows, bud
Above thee, paling thy tender bloom;
White, white for ever,
In soul changed never,
But deepening only in pure perfume:—
Lifted by passion
In sweet true fashion,
As years flit by thee, and swift consume.

XX

And thou, small token,
Shapely, unbroken,
I'll keep thee by me till she returns,
In sign that, moulding
To woman, but holding
In safe sweet keeping, Love o'er her yearns;
I kiss the thimble,
Whose bright shield nimble
From nimble fingers the needle spurns.