English Roses :: :: University of Virginia Library

Englishwoman with the gray blue eyes,
Like a sunburst in our blue gray skies
Breaking through the misty dome;
Tried by flame in Indian shambles,
Proved in iron Arctic frost;
But however torn and tost,
Worthy of your country's great preambles
And in every place at home.
Others wear more dazzling charms,
You are thorny like your native brambles;
But you have the warm wide mother's arms,
Unto which all children come.

Englishwoman, with the pure sweet eyes
Full of purpose and proud mysteries,
God has made no truer thing;
In the teeth of shipwreck's ordeal tested,
And by earthquake's awful shock
Weighed and found of granite rock,
With the grandeur of your race invested
And with what enrobes a king.
But accessible and soft in all
Modest ways and ever honey-breasted
To the sufferer's feeblest call,
With divine compassioning.

Englishwoman, with the grave clear eyes,
Wherein light of each good feeling lies,
As its lustre on the star;
Final work and flower of the Creator,
Blooming still more sure and bright

In the gardens of the night
And upon the tomb's dim dreadful crater,
Or through sorrow's blur and scar.
Ah, we know and trust thy dainty strength,
Over flood and fire arising greater
Till it guides us into port at length,
Though astray we be afar.

Englishwoman, with the wondrous eyes
Portals of unknown immensities,
Leading us to heaven and home;
Time can show no better force for shaping
Than the cunning of thy hand
Made to conquer and command,
Which redecks the earth with finer draping
And illumes the sky's dark dome.
Rule us still, for ever crowned and coy,
With thy beauty which is the escaping
Of the glory in that blessed joy,
Unto which we all would come.

MY RED ROSE.

Though many flowers may smile on me
And paint the deepest night,
Yet must I only look at thee,
Red Rose, my one delight;
When thou art close, I cannot see
Another face though fair it be,
Because thou art so bright.

The Pansy has a perfect grace
Which doth around me twine,
And in the Lily's turn I trace
A purity divine;
But in thy bridal chamber space
Each beauty has a dwelling place,
And every gift is thine.

What eye in pleasure would not dwell
On that embodied blush,

To which as in a crowning spell
Creation seems to rush?
And who, howe'er he knows thee well,
In melody or tale might tell
That heaven within thy hush?

The curve and colour of thy shape,
Elsewhere I do not mark;
It weds the glory on the grape
And secret of the dark;
The crimsons in which poppies drape,
Sunrise and moonrise all escape
From that celestial spark.

Unearthly fragrance from thee falls
And to each petal clings,
Which girds thee as with fairy walls
And soft enchanted things;
Thy breath to praise and worship calls,
And turns the hut to palace halls
With magic which it brings.

And he who once has lingered near
Thy rapture keen as pain,
Can nevermore be touched by fear
Or any earthly stain;
He carries balm for toil and tear
And music which none else can hear,
Nor stoops to ill again.

And I who of thy fulness drink
A passion deep and long,
Now do not waver on the brink
Of madness or the wrong;
Each bond is but a golden link
Wherein with God himself I think,
And every footstep song.

Thou shalt not die, a better birth
Does in thy passing wake,
Who giveth all a sacred girth
That mortals cannot make;

Which joins our misery to mirth,
And marries us to Heaven; and earth
Is sweeter, for thy sake.

And not thy humblest part, the thorn
Which pierces if we try
Or handle without heed in scorn
Thy radiant ecstacy;
Then only, chastened thus and torn,
My blindness opes to the blue morn
Which is Eternity

But rooted in a generous soil
Thou likest more the East,
And in our human care and coil
Thy lesson is not least;
And he who triumphs in his toil
Or rises splendid with the spoil,
Finds thee a richer feast.

O more than fair, immortal Rose,
In thy rejoicing red
So faultless in its final pose,
I see a holy bed
For maiden bosoms and for those
That walk with truth, which might enclose
Divinity's own Head.

And thou, my Red Rose, sweetest heart,
For ever fond and true,
The perfume of whose life has part
To all that's dear and due,
Dost breathe a blessing on each smart
That smiles beneath thy touch, and art
To Heaven my happy clue.

ROSA MUNDI.

Rosa Mundi—
Somewhere bright and somewhere sweet
With a nation at your feet;

Dainty morsel, not a common Salmagundi,
For a monarch fair and meet—
Rosa Mundi!
I shall never see that beauty
Which is just the dress of duty
Sitting on you softly, well;
In the bosom's swoon and swell,
And the shoulder
With a shaping white and innocent and bolder,
And the rounding of the dainty cheek and chin
Smooth and smiling beyond art
And a sculptor's power and part,
Beautiful to sense as sin;
Sitting on you truly, lightly,
As the colour on the flower,
As the moonshine on the tower,
As its lustre on the star—
Swaying slightly;
As the fire-bloom on the scar,
Brought by saintly souls who travelled down to hell
Just for others,
Virgin wives and maiden mothers,
And adventured right through the great burning bar
In the sureness
Of their pureness,
And came back serene and pale—
Living yet—to tell the tale.
But I never ask for vision
Of your face,
Or the falling of those feet
With their wanton indecision
And a miracle of grace,
Like the glow flakes
Of the snow flakes
Tinged by sunbeams coy and fleet,
Hesitating down to earth and dropping calm
On the upturned tiny palm
Of a baby's blessed hand;

Or the studied
Shy simplicity of gestures
Waved about you like command,
And the stainlessness of priestly rites and vestures
By our outer world unmuddied.
No, I never
Wish to see you, Rosa Mundi;
Nor would I make one endeavour
To behold you ere the hour,
When the spirit bursts in flower
And puts off this clogging flesh,
As the passing moon and sun die
And we break in glory from our prison mesh.
If I were indeed admitted
Just to the half-showing haze
Of a dim and distant gaze
And the uttermost far court,
I should be a life unfitted
And a moment's toy and sport.
O the veiled and mystic flashes
Of your cruel comeliness and spotless charms
And the tyrannous proud arms,
Worse than lightning,
With their curtained breath and bright'ning
Ooze of splendour, would consume my heart to ashes.
But I would in no wise come where
You are throned,
And enzoned
With a worship worthy of your awful dower;
Yet I know that you are somewhere,
Beautiful and blest, a power
Summing in your central seat
All that can be delicate and most delicious,
Made of heavy gold-brown tresses
And the white-pink lovelinesses
Melting in the bosom's beat,
And the mouth of red propitious;
Somewhere crownèd

By divinest right of merit,
As a Queen who doth inherit
Every goodness, every gift,
Which becomes a figure gownèd
Perfectly and not by thrift;
Just as if its pleasant robes
Were a portion
Of the exquisite pure bust and pouting lips,
Wedded as warm lips to lips,
Or as dusky lashes to their blue-gray globes—
And no milliner's distortion.
This is quite enough for me,
Rosa Mundi,
Fairer than fair Cleopatra
Or whoever now is, sweetest
And completely incompletest,
From the little isle of Lundy
To the furnace of Sumatra;
Just to know you are a living form and fragrance,
Moulded as no sculptor could
Carve in richest womanhood,
And a breathing
Pulse of passion's fiery vagrance
Bodied in a web of nerves
And most cunning hues and curves,
With a kind of halo's gentle dim enwreathing.
I can picture you at night,
In a terrible clear light
Making, breaking
Destinies of men and cities,
Not without immortal pities
Trembling in your dream-füll eyes,
Like the far gleam
And the star gleam
Of yet unarisen skies;
Acting history,
Turning nations and the individual's weakness
Into any show or shape,
As one might a silken cape—

But, amid the plastic meekness,
You, a mystery.
Sometimes in the sultry noon.
All ablaze with quivering light,
When great secret forces fight
(As not ever mortal men did)
Into open bounty of their languorous boon,
Fancy sees you,
Fancy flees you
Unapproachably removed and darkly splendid;
And a thousand thousand lustres
Speak and sparkle and contend
On your brow and scarlet lips
And from dazzling night of heavenly hair descend,
Till with coruscating clusters
On my soul drops down eclipse.
Love's own Lady,
In the gleams
Of a world of sunlit streams,
You are welcome, you are royal,
And they subject are and loyal;
While in shy retreats and shady
Corners, you are likewise fit
With your countless moods and modes
Quite beyond our common codes,
Fathomless and infinite.
Rosa Mundi,
Never shall your works begun die,
Though we ail and fail and falter
Ere the winnings,
Or faint-hearted pule and palter
With magnificence of sinnings;
You must carry
On the glorious labour as you only can,
Ministering to lonely man
By the beauty, by the bliss
Of the wedded clasp or kiss;
If you tarry
Now and then, and grudge those favours

Which are all our life's sweet savours.
You are just what each one wishes,
Every mother's son is sure
(If no other joys endure)
You will satisfy his heart
With the honey-due soft dishes
Which love only may impart.
So you are most ripe and real,
Though ideal,
To the love-sick and forlorn
And will be to breasts unborn
Still the same,
Fuel of a deathless flame
In the temple of the universal soul,
Past the compass and the map of our control.
You are just what each one fancies,
Night or day,
Grave or gay,
The delight of his romances;
For his converse, at his call,
Staid and steady,
Romping-ready,
And the one desire of all.
In the darling of our choice,
In the burden of our voice
You are regnant;
We behold you
And enfold you.
In your naked charms and graces
Pure, yet pregnant
With the homage of unnumbered times and places;
Out of light and out of darkness
Shadowed, shining,
But refining
Whatso'er you touch or take—
Till the stoniest lot and starkness,
To a gentle life awake;
Proud or mild,
With the wisdom of the ages

And philosophies of sages,
But not less a woman child;
Matron, maid
With her hidden passion blushing and afraid.
Ah, to me you are divinity
Clear, consummate, and my own;
Lovely, loveable, infinity,
Of my flesh and blood outgrown
Part and parcel, yet unknown
Whitest blossom of virginity;
Goddess, earthly, sole and separate and far
Up behind the dreadful bounds of many a bar,
While as near
As the laughter to the tear;
Shallow as a limpid brook,
Deeper than the Bay of Fundy
And the ocean's awful book—
Rosa Mundi.

THE INVALID.

Jane!
That was what her parents called her,
Heedless of their child's felicity
In the bond, which thus enthralled her
By the curt and coarse simplicity—
Bound to be her future bane.
Yet arising
With surprising
Cleverness above her doom,
She transmuted a dull story
Of unmitigated gloom,
Into quite a crown of glory.

Jane!
She with subtle female quickness
Saw and seized her opportunity,
And assumed the part of sickness
With its chances and impunity,
And the curtained window pane.

Nothing sweeter
Or discreeter
Than this stroke of genius bright,
Could have saved her from the stigma
Of deserved not slur or slight—
Now she was a fair enigma.

Jane!
None could ever style her Jenny
Now and scorn her quiet homeliness,
As if hardly worth a penny—
She put on a garb of comeliness,
Changing hourly like a vane.
With her sceptre
Still adepter
Each new day aloft, alone,
She dispensed her laws unfailing
Sitting queenlike on a throne,
From her couch of measured ailing.

Jane!
Thus she meted that or this stress,
With a swift and sad authority;
Parents', servants', doctors', mistress,
One against the vast majority—
Nursing woes that did not wane.
Every morrow
Had its sorrow,
Or some pain defying cure;
Left her yet more firmly planted
In an empire broad and sure,
Ruling over slaves enchanted.

JOAN.

I tell you, Joan
Was never and will never be as cheap
As your great market heap
Of marriageable girls, all sorts and sizes—
But one of the few prizes;

And she is staunch
As my pet strawberry roan,
From tiny head to shapely haunch:
Excuse the simile;
Not like that made-up Lady Emily,
All rouge and powder—see her puff box!
And sniffling like that priest of Bethel,
The Baal jumper
And mad tub-thumper;
I'll take a pinch—
Thanks for your snuff-box!
You talk of Ethel—
Ah, my true Joan is honest every inch,
And looks it, walks it in high-stepping paces,
With all the usual gifts and graces;
Plus that which makes the grand totality
(Without the fads that turn most silly)
Her bright fresh individuality;
And fairly broken now to hand—
Yes, running in a silken band—
My chestnut filly.
Just see her action, mark her head
So delicately poised on arching
Swan neck and shoulder—
All thoroughbred.
None of your stupid codes and starching,
But freedom, fire, and open ways
And (as there is no figure bolder)
What I should call sheer “devil”—
Force bursting through thin custom stays,
In gay ripe revel.
You are a scholar, I a mere plain man, sir,
Though not a simple Simon;
And you would reel me off a sounding chain
Of learnèd words, in form of answer,
Out of your loaded classic brain,
And say she has a “Daimon.”
Ah, many a moth
Was scorched in her fierce candle
And went out into utter

Darkness—if with a sputter.
She hourly made and broke her solemn troth
And liked to dandle
One puppet, then another, as a loan
Repaid in tears
And blighted years—
That's Joan.

CICELY.

Neatly, nicely, little Cicely
Radiant with her wild rose-bloom,
As if born without a thorn
Flits about the social room;
Each light action is distraction
Done with pure unconscious art,
Which in smiling ways beguiling
Flutters every foolish heart.
Curates flocking round her mocking
Playful words discover late,
From the woes of secret throes
They have met the usual fate.

She is tender, soft and slender,
But has got a stubborn will;
And those feet, however sweet,
Tread down all obstruction still.
Yet her careful path is prayerful
Starting from the early shrine,
And her motions at devotions
Though unstudied are divine.
And so pretty are the jetty
Lashes curtaining her eyes,
That amaze can hardly gaze
Into those deep mysteries.

She has prickles fair and stickles
Not at seasons in their use,
And no thorn is as the scorn
Veiled in compliments profuse.

But the satire like her attire
Is most delicate and dear,
For it heals whate'er it steals
And has never wrung a tear.
But I wonder if a blunder
Was by nature wrought in spite,
And her face alone is grace
With the heart omitted quite.

Neatly, nicely, little Cicely
Goes her own indifferent way;
Now at morn to pleasure born,
Then at Evensong to pray.
For the beauties of Church duties
She has a religious thirst,
And is pat in all the matin
Services and ever first.
But she marks not, and she harks not
To adorers at her side;
Deaf to love, she laughs above,
In her heedless power and pride.

A BESOM.

With a tongue, with a temper and way
That is hardly discretion
And a trick of transgression—
But not wrought from the commoner clay;
She has something of iron,
In the purpose that never will mend
And moves steadfast and straight to its end,
With the face of a Siren.
But you cannot help liking her too,
And the lovers are legion that woo
Those imperious paces,
And fresh mutinous graces.

Here is one, I confess, of the fools
Who are proud to go slaving
At her hand's pretty waving,
And delight to be toys or her tools.

Yes, in spite of her frankness
And her fidgets and humours and all,
My poor life without her and her call
Would be burdensome blankness.
I adore her, and kneel at the shrine
Which is sweeter because not divine;
But I serve at a distance,
And with no soft assistance.

O she may be a “Besom” and more
And her tantrums are awful,
Sometimes even unlawful,
But she's loyal and honest at core.
She seems often quite merry—
Though perhaps at the mischief she makes
Or the hearts that her petulance breaks,
And is brown as a berry.
In her passions of course she shows best,
And in fig leaves alone would look drest;
I have seen her half tipsy
With mere life, like a gipsy.

I should pity her husband, and yet
Though she treads on conventions
She has proper intentions,
And her thorns are her jewels and set.
But we want a good sweeper,
In the rot and the rubbish and dust
With which customs would perish or rust—
She is everyone's keeper,
And her victims do not heed the pain,
They are ever the last to complain;
For she holds us in order,
Though for her is no border.

HALLELU NELL.

“I'm just bustin' wi' glory,”
Said our Hallelu Nell,
“From a-tellin' the story
Of triumphs o'er 'ell.

And the Capting and me
Had a thunderin' tea,
Of good shrimps and salvation,
When we pluckt from damnation,
A 'ot firebrand young swell.
O 'e dropt in like Balaam
Orl to cuss and confound us,
An' e' went 'ome no stray lamb
But a-folded and sure,
An' a convert secure.
But the Lard were around us,
And as blindness could see,
Played the Divil wi' 'e.
Yes, the Lard gave 'is pepper
To that lost one and leper,
An' 'is arrer went hin;
Till that mighty 'igh stepper
Were convicted of sin.
So the Capting and me
Had the shrimps for our tea—
Hallelu! Hallelee!”

JEANNE D'ARC.

Whitest-souled of women standing
'Twixt the daylight and the dawn,
Crowned with glory and commanding
Worlds though long from earth withdrawn!
We, who mourn the monstrous sentence
Passed upon thy service true,
Come with free though late repentance
Here to pay the honour due.
England, as one man, before thee
Kneels to crave thy pardon now;
Sons of men who slew adore thee,
Queen and saint, with haloed brow.

Whitest blossom, wondrous maiden,
Sphered above us in pure light;

Erst with sins and sorrows laden
For thy county, as thy right!
Surely thou wast thus anointed
Then with suffering and its brand
To redress the times disjointed,
Not for one but every land.
If our sires betrayed thee, keeping
Counsel but with bloody parts;
Let us build thy tomb, with weeping,
In the temple of all hearts.

IN THE ROUGH.

None of your angels, Priest, for me;
But ripeness real and human,
Voluptuous limbs and graces free—
A blood—and—fleshly woman!
I am sick of all your pious paint
And cheap hysteric purity.
The raptures of the writhing saint—
A fig for church futurity.
Give me the naked bust, and charms
Not coy nor yet too clamorous:
The hanging breasts and heavy arms,
And kisses bold and amorous.

What, do you blame me, reverend Priest,
With all your paid-for patter?
Man is half brother to the beast,
And more than three parts matter.
He loves his dishes full and hot
Not virtues vegetarian.
And if he has an angel's lot
The angel is Tartarean.
So let me rollick, while I may,
With woman of like leaven,
And make the best of mortal clay—
I am nearer earth than Heaven.

SALVATION SALLY.

I am young Salvation Sally,
And I feel no mortal woe
In the blackest slum and alley
Held against us by the foe.
We are marching on to Glory, 'twixt the dying and the dead;
But we heed no bar or danger, while the Lord is overhead.
Flame and iron, blood and thunder,
Are our watchwords as we move
Treading earth and evil under—
All the master would reprove.
To the music of the tambourine and rattle of the drum,
We are steeping boldly forward, ever on to Kingdom Come.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally,
No fine lady bound to faint
When the flints fly musically—
No love sick rose-water saint.
We are fighting for the Captain, and we count no shame or shock;
In the hurly-burly dancing, with our feet upon the rock.
Though my bread has oft no butter,
And we get more blows than pence,
I pluck souls from out the gutter
And the Lord is my defence,
When I wrestle sore with vices in a shade like judgment gloom,
Loudly ringing in my ear is the archangel's trump of doom.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally,
Ripe for any turn or toil
Like a slave upon a galley—
When redemption is the spoil.
What are scars but decorations, what are wounds on breast and hand,
If we rescue from the burning only one consuming brand?
Others rest on purple pillows
But I know the time is short
And I brave the tossing billows,
Bringing shipwrecks into Port.
Yes, I hear the Master's footsteps, now, along the shining shore;
I must work while I am able, till I rest for evermore.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally,
And I laugh at sticks and stones,
When about the Ark we rally
To the banjo and the bones.
We are in the Blessed Army, and we serve alone the Lord;
He will keep us in the battle, He is Sun and Shield and Sword.
I have offered all and given
Of my utmost and the best,
To be healed and cleansed and shriven
Safe upon the Saviour's breast.
Gladly did I part from even my sweetheart and my kith and kin,
That I might make Him my Husband and be washed from every sin.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally—
Not bad-looking too—but, then,
I have left the vicious valley
And the wicked baits of men.

I am stepping up and higher on the holy mountain tops,
Far above your sweet temptations and the gilt of sugared sops.
I have found the milk and honey,
Goodly pearls and costly spice;
Purchased by no bribe of money,
But attained through sacrifice.
Gaily fasting, in the teeth of oaths and buffets, still I ask
Not for wages of the worker, but a double heavier task.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally,
On the watch for any sin;
Be it brothel, be it ballet,
Always ready to romp in—
Wave the flag and march, where drunkards at their orgies loaf or lurch;
Lift the songs of Zion louder than the droning of the Church.
Hell and all its demon malice
Will not make my paces trip;
I will dare, and dash the chalice
From the sot's poor trembling lip.
O I see a crown before me, and the promise of a palm;
And to suffer so for Jesus, is enough reward and balm.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally,
Fashioned of a sterner stuff
Than to dawdle here or dally,
For a blow or one rebuff;
Shaped and shaken by the hustling of the mob to harder form,

Till I take the bruises kindly and can ride upon the storm.
What are blows and maledictions,
Earth of iron and heaven of brass;
If the Lord, in her afflictions,
Holds His Hallelujah Lass?
I can bear the furnace hotter, I will welcome lash and loss,
Just to plant a little farther in the darkness the dear Cross.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner! what of thee?

I am young Salvation Sally,
And I never may grow old;
Now no more I shilly-shally,
With the fleshpots and the gold.
I have got a secret manna and the treasure of the truth,
And the well of living Water will ensure eternal youth.
For the Lord is food and clothing,
And my sorrows are His kiss;
Trouble is His touch, and nothing
(While He keeps me) comes amiss.
We are marching on to Glory, through the wilderness and flood;
Purged for ever from our passions, in the fountain of the Blood.
Hallelujah! I am free;
Man and sinner, what of thee?

MURIEL.

When I gaze at Muriel
Calmly bright,
All hearts' delight,
Lo, I walk on asphodel;
Flash upon me, as I look,

Regions fair
Of purple air,
Opened like a wonder book.
And I seem transported far
Out of space,
Beyond the trace
Of the least-conjectured star.

With a wistful glance her eye
Turns from ill,
While catching still
Glimpses of eternity.
Never quite at home on earth,
She outstands
On borderlands
Leading from our dusk and dearth.
Though one foot is planted here
Over death,
She draws her breath
In another atmosphere.

When I speak to Muriel,
She if nigh
Appears as high
As a solemn sentinel;
Planted by an angel host,
On a tall
Fair city's wall,
Keeping guard at her great post;
And her very words sound faint,
Hardly clear
To human ear,
Like the visions of a saint.

Every time she moves, she brings
Memories
And ecstasies
Of pure hopes and happy wings.
Golden chords of our lost strain,
Murmur on
Of music gone,

Which will yet come back again.
Thus, although I cannot guess
What her sight
Beholds in light,
I can feel her heavenliness.

NAOMI.

Naomi, dear bud of beauty,
Tell me where
Love is born for bliss and duty,
That my fancy may fly there.
Did you come
On a prayer or promise gliding
And with heaven in your safe hiding,
As the angels—earth has some?
You know well,
What the secret and the sources
Of the secret fires and forces;
Whisper, and I will not tell.

Naomi, your name is sweetness,
Naughty strife
Must keep far from maiden meetness,
Meant as music for our life.
Your white part
Is, upon the curve of kindness,
To pour sunbeams into blindness
And to feed the hungry heart.
God has made
You, to carry His pure message,
With its broad and brighter presage
For your sisters in the shade.

“TOM'S A-COLD!”

“Tom's a-cold!”
Thus the burden came to me,
Doubtful if to stand or flee
From the darkness fold-on-fold.

Was it some poor child astray,
While its teeth went chitter chatter
And each foot kept pitter patter,
Just like castanets at play?
I who fancied I was bold,
Trembled at that troubled cry
Wrung from pain and misery—
“Tom's a-cold!”

“Tom's a-cold!”
And the words came closer still
Down the hollow in the hill,
With an agony untold.
It was some belated boy,
With a frame that shook and shivered
And the breath that caught and quivered,
Mocking our bright Christmas joy.
I in selfishness grown old
Heard that anguish beating time,
With the blast in winter rime—
“Tom's a-cold!”

“Tom's a-cold!”
Suddenly from that deep night
Drew a strange unearthly sight,
Something piteous to behold.
For a little child stept forth
Helplessly, and all a-flutter
With the frost and all an utter
Nakedness in the grim north.
Quite a baby thing, with gold
Tresses gleaming stiff and stark
From the icy wind and dark—
“Tom's a-cold!”

“Tom's a-cold!”
Up he wavered with his eyes
Sad as dead eternities,
Dim from their most awful mould.
Yet a boy and very fair,
Though his teeth went chitter chatter

And each foot kept pitter patter,
In the horror of the air.
But when now within my hold,
To be warmed upon my breast,
Lo, he vanished in unrest—
“Tom's a-cold!”

TANSY.

Heaven may vanish like a dream
Or the glimmer of a stream,
And all hell come;
But if other forms go by,
Thou, pure Immortality,
Shalt be well come.

Radiant eyes of more than morn
Into our dumb darkness born,
Love expected;
Hail to thee, white wondrous Child,
Earthly yet all undefiled,
God-protected!

Thou dost bloom the brighter yet
From the shadows round us set,
And art sweeter;
These imperfect works, that weave
Lesser lives of frailty, leave
Thine completer.

O shine on, incarnate Bliss,
Poised betwixt a smile and kiss,
Mercy's prophet;
I shall hear thy footsteps pass
Soft as dew upon the grass,
Down in Tophet.

THE SIBYL.

The light of long-past ages
Lay upon her calm eyes,

Which looked the passion pages
Of dreadful mysteries;
With all the hopes and fears
Of all the yearning years,
In dead eternities.

With dim and distant waking,
The yet undreamed-of morn
Seemed in her vision breaking,
Beyond the gulfs forlorn;
The future like a rose
White-bosomed did unclose,
The bliss of man unborn.

By nothing stirred or stricken
She saw the waves of time,
Like clouds of sunset sicken
From their pure golden prime;
Till every hue and ray
Made music, in the day
Of the one perfect chime.

Above all grief and gladness
She watched the pageants pass,
The lights of mirth or madness,
Like shadows on the grass;
And her great tranquil eyes
Reflected earth and skies,
As in some heavenly glass.

TO MAUDE.

Maude,
Nature lent thee,
Beauty meant thee
To be very true and brave,
Not a bright and jewelled fraud
Blown by every wind and wave
Of the Mode, through gilded glooms—
Even in ducal drawing-rooms.
Surely thou
Hast a soul of better stuff

Than a mantle or a muff,
Or the pearls upon thy brow?

Life
Is no sonnet,
Nor a bonnet
Fashioned in the richest way;
But it knows the altar knife,
And through sorrows learns to pray
Is to be in perfect truth
And retain perpetual youth.
Heaven is thine,
Not a thing of utter chance
But a due inheritance,
And to make this earth Divine.

Love
In its fulness
Lights the dulness,
Which were else our petty part;
Not the fitting of a glove,
Nor the follies of the mart;
In the broidered cuff or cape,
Soul and all may thus escape.
Time is more,
Than the passion of an hour
Or the flushing of a flower,
With eternity in store.

Maude,
Life is living
Just by giving
All we are and all we have,
With a mind above the gawd
That can only deck a grave;
Dare to be thyself, and turn
From the lights that downward burn.
Do the thing
That is worthy, to the close;
Till it orbs a perfect rose—
Though by daily suffering.

GLADYS.

Gladys, tell me
What the secret is of joy,
When the shadows that repel me
Only are to you a toy;
How you find delight in fears
Which befel me,
And a sweet that cannot cloy
In the fountain of soft tears.
Cares, my trouble
Fain would double,
Are to you a source of blessing and the music of the years
Or a bubble.

Gladys, bid me
Share the sunshine of your lot,
Out of darkness that has hid me
From your brightness with its blot;
Let me gather, though your lip
Often chid me,
Fruits of beauty which may not
Now from my dull hearing slip.
Love, if blindly
And confin'dly,
Lifts to you a heart of homage and a hand of fellowship—
Treat them kindly.

Gladys, take me
As I am, an empty thing,
To your bosom which will make me
Laugh and blossom out and sing;
Do not let me drift afar,
Nor forsake me
In the splendour of your Spring,
When the gates of heaven unbar.
Faith is flowing,
With the blowing

Of the flowers that break in lustre, like a sky of many a star
Earth-wise growing.

Gladys, hold me with the passion of your spell
Which has captured long and told me
Where the founts of glory dwell;
Keep me with your gossamer
Chains that fold me,
And the charms that fit me well
With the choice you still defer.
Life is nothing
But for lothing,
If love house it not and give it (though it be a prisoner)
Food and clothing.

THE ROWAN TREE.

Will she meet me at the high light
Of a glaring summer noon,
Or some turning in the twilight
And a mist-belated moon?
Or when dawn is young and tender, with an unarisen splendour,
She will surely meet me soon?
Others may be false and fickle,
And with feigned caresses dear
Fondly love to tease and tickle
Empty heart and idle ear.
But my darling is as loyal, as her nature must be royal
And without a fault or fear.

Hallowe'en is drawing nearer,
And the rowan tree grows red
With a promise written clearer
As each leaf is lightly shed;
And I know that when the shadows fall upon the moor and meadows,
I shall see her haloed head.

Others may delight to cozen
Foolish lives of faithless men,
She would come if rolled a dozen
Seas betwixt her and my ken;
And if I am true and ready, at the tree with footstep steady
She will surely meet me then.

THE EVERLASTING BOY.

The everlasting boy—
Young king, upon the edge of Time
He stood and let his challenge chime
Down ages in his joy.
He saw the sunrise in his face,
Which was the morning's early grace
Yet bore the evening hue;
And in the passion of his pride
He thrust the thought of death aside,
And to himself was true.
He looked the herald of our God,
And in His might and music trod.

The everlasting boy—
He only laughed when peril came
And fronted it as though a game,
The tomb was even his toy.
He played with every form of fear,
And passed a while to re-appear
With insolence Divine;
And out of suffering and the shade,
However grim, his courage made
A dazzling discipline.
Heaven over him grew still more sweet,
And earth a carpet for his feet.

The everlasting boy—
He has a thousand shining shapes,
And at his richest flower escapes
Our grasp with presence coy.

No poet yet has duly sung
Elusive charms superbly young,
Superbly free and wild;
Unstable as the ocean wind,
With all the ardours of all Ind
Summed in a wanton child.
But when his glory most is shed,
Even as we gaze, the bloom has fled.

The everlasting boy—
Lord of the ages, bright and lone,
He sits upon his mocking throne
Which nothing can destroy.
We love him much, but often dread
The darling terrors of his tread,
That heeds no sacred bounds;
Unturned by loss, untaught by pain,
From broken bars he comes again
To customs he confounds.
But, as he wayward passes by,
Is something of Divinity.

DELICIOUS DEATH.

On the dim selvage of the dusk,
The uttermost gray mist and marge
Of an enchanted wood,
Which held as in a sacred husk
Some dainty and most precious charge,
Tempting a maiden stood.
One foot was in the shadow set,
One trembled in the moonshine's ray
Which flickered where it fell;
And her great dewy eyes were wet
With tears, that veiled the dazzling day
Of their unearthly spell.

Naked in all her native charms,
She beckoned to me with her hands,
Which glimmered clear and white;

And O the gesture of those arms
Was like an awful Queen's commands,
Compelling, infinite.
And on her half-averted face
Crowned with its golden locks of light,
My eyes enamoured fed;
I owned the glamour of its grace,
The softness that was more than sight,
The breast a marriage bed.

I moved unconscious to the snare
Which would have drawn an angel down,
And felt her glowing breath;
I watched her shoulders shining bare
From fading autumn's foliage brown,
Nor knew that lovely death.
I marked the moulding of her hips,
The wave of warm delicious teats
Fluctuant to and fro;
I longed to set my thirsty lips
In passion on those bosom beats,
And clasp that heaven below.

Ah, though the semblance of a skull
Rolled from the flutter of her feet,
And settled at my side;
Yet, in a rapture deep and dull,
I sought that fond forbidden sweet
In her voluptuous pride.
But, as I murmured Jesus' name
And signed the signing of the Cross,
The beauty turned to blight;
I saw a loathsome thing of shame,
A shape of horror, writhe and toss
Down to its native night.

CHILD GOING TO SLEEP.

Men are so wicked, father says—he knows,
Who never did or felt a naughty deed
And loves them all, from surly Sol the miser

To our good Queen. Ah, how the river flows
And scatters round it life, and none take heed
Though wealthier for its gifts—yet none the wiser.
Chitter, chatter, pitter, patter,
Through the village street;
Laughing, lisping, creeping crisping
With its pretty feet.
That's me—or rather how I want to live
And minister to every one in need,
By sowing here a kindness as a seed
And there what little comfort I can give
Out of my slender store. I see the fetter
Of evil binding hand and foot and fast
The multitude, that fight and fall at last—
And I do long to make the wide world better!
True, I am very small and but a child,
Who cannot come and go as others may
And walk about and work—and only seven;
But then, though sinners are so rude and wild,
They would not hurt me on my humble way
And I might show them too the path to Heaven.
How the wind blows! Like a lost baby crying
Among the trees and shadows, as it goes
And hardly touches earth with just the toes—
It must be weary of such ceaseless flying.
Hurry, hurry, flurry flurry,
Never taking rest;
Rustle, rustle, bustle, bustle,
With its burdened breast.
Yes, I should dearly like to wander free
As that among the busy crowds and sing
And bear them blessings, though they could not see
The giver. Yet I would not ever cry,
At least not loud, nor harm a bonnet string
Nor set a single hair a bit awry
With blustering blast; I would play proper tunes
And make all months as pleasant as rose Junes.
At morning I would rouse the lazy sleepers
With trumpet notes, and when the evening fell
I should breathe on them just a quiet spell

And rock them out of all their misery—
The suffering souls and overwrought, and weepers,
And dear tired children's heavy breast and brow—
With music of the softest lullaby,
Like that sweet silence falling on me now.

SACRED SEVEN.

“I have four children”—thus I spoke,
Heedless of jealousy it woke
In one warm bosom—“Nay,” said Maud,
The niece that had no little part
Of love and housing in my heart,
With eyes effulgent from the laud
Just laid upon her—“We are five,
All bees in one dear honey hive.”
I laughed, and with convenient kiss
Hushed lips that had not urged amiss;
And then continued, “Five we are!”
When of a sudden from afar
The baby voice of him that died,
In music soft as tears replied—
“Not so,” dear father, we are six,
And I unheard do ever mix
With all your joys, though none may see.”
So answered I, “Six let it be!”
But then the street door opened wide,
And stepped a beggar boy inside
With rags and hunger and distress
Clad in his lonely helplessness;
Who, as I gave the broken bread
And warming him embraced that head
Of suffering, said, “We are seven!”
For it was Christ, and Christ was Heaven.

MAUDIE.

I sometimes sit and wonder why
You are so saucy and yet shy,
With sunshine of an April sky,
Maudie;

And whence you get the golden art
Which must in magic have a part,
Of making yours my captive heart,
Maudie.

Ah, you would never tell me how
The haloed hair on that white brow,
That then was light, is shadow now,
Maudie;
Perchance you do not know the way
Yourself of such mysterious play,
With which you mingle night and day,
Maudie.

I often think our lips will meet,
A moment's marriage soft and sweet,
Just to be mocked by flitting feet,
Maudie;
And if a kiss rewards my cry,
It seems to touch and tremble by—
A rose leaf or a butterfly
Maudie.

I cannot fix you in one mood,
Nor learn the secret fire and food
Of your enchanted maidenhood,
Maudie;
You come and go, a glancing flame,
But never twice will be the same
In nature if you are in name,
Maudie.

You do not with my children weep
Or want repose, and safely keep
Your counsels in pretence of sleep,
Maudie;
Yet somewhere I, who know you hest,
Feel there is music in your breast
Which love will waken from its rest,
Maudie.

And when the destined day is born,
The leaves that hid the coming morn
Will hang a blossom on each thorn,
Maudie;
While he, who has the proper clue
And key to open what is due,
Will come and seek nor vainly sue,
Maudie.

THRICE-BORN.

O thrice-bestowed by God, thou precious gift,
My daughter, in the flame
That sought but could not find a fatal rift,
Kept by the Holy Name!
At birth committed to my hungry heart,
Which flowered as from the dust;
To find it had in Heaven so rich a part,
With this exceeding trust.
And then, while flickered low the lamp of breath
Beneath the blast of ill,
Forth from the cruel hand of instant death
Drawn closer to me still.

Sweet Wendeline, thrice-over thus my child,
And on an awful track
Surrendered to our God, who, as he smil'd,
Received thee and brought back!
Thine is no humble lot of human fate,
But beyond dark and doubt,
To step inside the grim eternal gate
And pass victorious out.
When skill of man was impotent, to save
The soul by fire refined;
Prayer wrote thy respite, which was by the grave
Itself then countersigned.

And surely thou wast ever meant to make
Brighter the path of thorn,
Which all who suffer and have sinned must take,
My dearest, thou Thrice-born!

For destiny lies on that crownèd head
Whereto the shadow clings
Though now through radiant sunshine only read,
To do no common things.
Redeemed from under the dread altar knife,
Demanding lamb and dove;
Bloom of the epos of my singing life,
O thou immortal love.

GREEN AND GOLD.

Finis Coronat Opus.

Green and golden,
Maiden, with the magic eyes,
Like a picturè of the past
Stepping down to us from olden
Years and fairy fantasies—
Vanished, but recalled at last!
Wilt thou listen
To a tale repeated oft,
Ever ancient, ever new;
While the first stars faintly glisten,
As in gardens hung aloft
Little lamps of diamond dew?

“How can winter
Hope to wed with verdant May,
And the frost embrace the fire?”
Ah, and like an icy splinter
Falls the answer though in play,
If it only whets desire.
Yet the snowy
Freshness of a northern wind,
When the lands are sweltering heat,
Better is than all the showy
Sunshine with its airs of Ind—
It renews the roses' seat.

Yea, the foreland
Bleak and bitter on its tower

Meeting all the blasts that blow,
Still protects the timid shoreland;
Sheltering the shadowed flower,
And the tender life below.
Yea, the iron
Ribs of rock like hungry arms
And without one spot of green,
Still in marriage bonds environ
Shy and shrinking virgin charms
From rude ills, and rise between.

Green and golden,
Maiden, with the mystic look
And a heart my bosom's mate;
Is not youth indeed beholden
Unto age's story book,
In the wise decrees of fate?
There is twining
For thy weakness in my strength,
Which will hold thee surely up;
And my clouds shall put on shining
From thy dazzling dawn, at length—
With the crowning of the cup.

WILD FACE.

Wild face, beautiful and brown,
Haunting me, haunting me,
Grey eyes under their dark crown
Glancing up and glancing down,
Taunting me, taunting me!
Art thou woman, art thou witch,
Cruel as some bloodhound bitch,
Spying me, spying me;
For a cerement to stitch,
Trying me, trying me?
None conjecture what thou art.
Saving grace without a heart.

Art thou something more than air
Mocking me, mocking me,

With that wicked face so fair,
And those hands that sweetly pair,
Locking me, locking me?
Art thou, betwixt day and night,
Beauty bodied into light
Trapping me, trapping me;
With a death that is delight
Wrapping me, wrapping me?
None may hazard what thou art,
But a riddle all apart.

Bosom never to be tamed.
Schooling me, schooling me
To a passion that has flamed
Fiercely forth and unashamed,
Fooling me, fooling me!
Brow unformed of blood and flesh,
Bright hair woven to a mesh
Folding me, folding me,
Till I sin and sin afresh—
Holding me, holding me!
None may gather what thou art,
Each has felt the fatal dart!

BUBBLE.

Bright Bubble! Child, thou art no more
Nor ever canst be less,
In dew and sunshine dress
And touched with glint of golden ore.
Dance on
And laugh and love and dream
Adown the stream
As woman babes in Babylon
In early gloom and gleam—
Till dawn is gone,
Rejoice, dear things that may;
I am too old to play.

Bright Bubble! Maiden child,
No shadows fall on thee
Save to relent and flee,

And leave thee yet all undefiled.
No thorn
Or cruel fear
Hides in the blossom near,
To darken thy young morn
With venomed doubt, or spear
Of bitter scorn.
Rejoice, sweet hearts that can;
Leave thought to man.

ASPASIA.

Who shall deny the world had stept
Unto a broader purpose bright,
And laughed in the eternal light;
Or womanless in sorrow wept,
Persuaded of a better plan;
Or music moved and suffering slept,
And wicked love not idly leapt—
But for the Queenly Courtesan?

Who shall gainsay, that secret springs
Now in the night for ever lost
And sealed with more than winter frost,
Had made us drink of better things;
And earth seen more imperial man,
Who with lighthearted joy had crost
His present bars nor counted cost—
But for the Queenly Courtesan?

Yet who shall answer, nought is gained
By passion and illicit fires,
And death that lurks in mad desires;
Or prove the living story stained
Is wholly evil for its ban,
And fatal charms could have been chained
For time far other than ordained—
But for the Queenly Courtesan?

CHIVALRY.

Chivalry? It has no meaning,
But when every woman can
Go whene'er she listeth, leaning
On the empire as one man;
When her needs are every brother's,
And his own and not another's;
While ten thousand strong right arms
Rise, for wrongs which falsehood smothers—
To redress insulted charms;
When her honour to the nation
Is its jewel and salvation,
Shielded from the breath of harms.

Chivalry? It is the beating
Pulse within the breast of all,
Life of life, and not retreating
Till the last foundations fall.
More than Fate itself and clearer
Than the trumpet's call and nearer
To the fountain-head of things,
This holds woman's welfare dearer
Than the majesty of kings.
Nor have bulwarks yet been planted,
So divine and so enchanted
As its heavenly shadowings.

Chivalry? It came from heaven
With immortal souls, and trod
Earth remoulded by its leaven
For the dwelling-place of God.
Breathing all religion's meetness
With a more than human sweetness,
Dawned its light upon the lands;
Giving men the one completeness
Wanted, and fair golden bands.
O its joy of revelation
Was their spirit's inspiration,
And gave courage to their hands.

Chivalry? Thou son of Mary,
It is walking in Thy track,
Though the winds and weathers vary
And we suffer wrath and wrack;
When each maiden high and lowly
Is alike a sister holy,
Reverenced in rags or lace,
And our hearts that once beat slowly
Yield to them the loftiest place;
When with purer love and gnosis
They receive apotheosis,
As their right and God-like grace.

PULCHRIORI DETUR.

To thee, more a ravishing and fair
Than other forms superbly sweet,
Unborn as yet, or with a chair
For babies meet!
I bring this garland for thy hair
Which fancy now from far doth greet,
And lily bells of price to pair
Thy flower-like feet.

What matters it that this poor hand
Shall never rest and glow in thine,
Nor I a willing servant stand
Within the shrine?
Thy beauty still lights the whole land
For me, and maketh nature mine;
And all I am, at thy command,
Becomes divine.

I see thee now, with prophet look
Which is no idle gleam or guess,
Nor picture from a story book,
In white undress.
Thy voice is like a babbling brook,
A-rippling through a wilderness;
Which from it takes, and ever took,
Its loveliness.

AN INCIDENT.

Nut-brown Bridget
Woke one dawn with dewy eyes
Glistening like the opening skies,
In a fever and a fidget.
Had not Ethel,
Daughter of the Minister
Who was want to roar in Bethel,
She that played the dulcimer
In the chapel,
Asked her on that summer day
Just to steal with her away
And enjoy a little bite
(Which would soil no garment white)
Of the fair forbidden apple?
Birds were calling,
Petals falling
From the roses pink and red
In the garden at the gate,
As she crowned her pretty head
With a hat as fit as fate.
But then surely
And demurely,
Like a kitten with a mouse,
Off she started
Summer-hearted
From the house;
With the glory of her errand
Played with, patted, as a boy
Makes in class a serious toy
Of some unfamiliar gerund.
At the corner
Ethel clothed in pearly gray,
Tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and prim
With the meekness of a mourner
Met her like a muffled hymn,
Which has sadly gone astray;
So subdued her Sabbath voice,
Which yet hardly dared rejoice.

Both soon bubbled up with glee,
And ran over
Like a vessel
Filled beyond its fullest measure,
As they felt themselves so free,
Passing fields of crimson clover
Where the rippling wind would wrestle
With the blossoms at their feet,
And remove the choicest treasure
Honeyed by reposing sweet.
Then they came
To the iron road and carriage
Ready with the steed of flame,
As if going to their marriage;
Laughing, talking, full of light—
Till the crash and cruel night.

AUGUSTA REDIVIVA.

Soaked in depths of day and night, in sleep and laughter,
Art thou goddess, art thou child,
Woman-born but with no heed of our Hereafter
Yet by nothing here beguil'd?
When I gaze upon the ripeness of those pouting
Rhythmic rose-red old-world lips,
Then down ages comes the thunder of the shouting
In the Roman great eclipse;
And I picture pomp and state-craft with the gory
Sands of scenic pride and power,
And thy beauty throned by Cæsar in his glory,
Bursting into scarlet flower.
Other-time, and ancient circumstance and splendour,
Round thee with a harder line;
Yet those eyes of midnight can be mild and tender,
With deliciousness divine.
And that mouth that curls to meet me, proud and fearless,
Once by Emperors was kist;
When they leant upon thy bosom, lustful, tearless,

In their robes of amethyst.
Like verbena perfumes of the past and stages
Tramped by loud prætorian feet,
Cling about thee and unclose those grand grim pages,
Living, terrible and sweet.
Light of dew and bloom of passion, rich and rotten,
Yet in dying more than ours;
Breathe from thy full fairness of repasts forgotten,
And ambrosial breasts and bowers.
O Augusta, blood and flame and arms of iron,
If thou dost to love consent,
Yield their dreadfulness to thee and thus environ
Favours when thy limbs relent.
But thy milk is wine, thy meekness but the pity
Of the gods who cannot spare,
Dealing out the destined fate to soul or city
In the calmness of their care.
Heroes from those loins must issue, lordly natures,
Not the starvelings of our days;
Minds that give and take no seal or legislatures,
Duller than imperial rays.
Once thy love was death to little hearts of mortals
Who would flutter in thy fires,
And the fools that dared thee never left those portals
Blasted with their vain desires.
For thy cosmic unconcern was vast and awful
As the sweep of planets' path,
Never asking if thy pleasure might be lawful
Or consuming in its wrath.
Yet amid thy larger fancies lurked that sportive
Spirit of a babe at play,
Dropping deaths and lives and passing loves abortive,
Tears and laughters, on its way;
Infancy divinely deaf for ever making
Treasures of unhoarded joys,
In unconscious nakedness, and idly breaking
Hearts and continents and toys.

CIRCE.

Out of the red lips laughter,
Music and lust and life
Careless of the hereafter,
Severing man and wife.
What if she treads the vintage
Ruddy but not with grapes,
Moulding in her own mintage
Shameful but goodly shapes?
Souls are her daily portion,
Souls are her precious meat,
Darkened by strange distortion
Under hèr sanguine seat.

Out of the tresses golden
Cometh the light of loves
Gay with the glamour olden,
Softer than breasts of doves.
What if she kills with kisses
Suitors that go to doom,
Deaf to the fate that hisses
Down in the brightest bloom?
Souls are wherein she revels,
Souls are her luscious wine,
Turned into forms of devils,
Wallowing low as swine.

Out of the bosom's whiteness
Death and the shadows peep,
Woe with its infiniteness
Sapping the wells of sleep.
What if she asks the money
Coined but with idle tears,
Giving in turn the honey
Mingled with bitter tears?
Souls are her toys and treasure,
Souls are her daily bread;
Pain is her only pleasure,
Wrung from the living dead.

Out of the rapture roses
Drop on the dazzled slave,
Heedless how then uncloses
Gate of the sunless grave.
What if she blinds and blesses
All who desire her charms,
Slain in the sweet caresses
Lavished by loveless arms?
Souls are her food and clothing,
Souls are the awful price
Paid for the dear betrothing—
Nor do the souls suffice.

TOOTSY.

Tootsy,
Though a stranger,
Stole into my heart of hearts
With her open baby arts
And white footsy;
Sent to guard me mid the danger,
Like an angel from a sky
Of green light and gramarye.
Through a country not in charts
Tootsy,
Heiress of infinity,
Was a free and frolic ranger.

Brightly
Formed and rounded,
Out of purest pink and gold
Into something sweet and bold,
And so slightly;
Never was she once confounded
By a question or a glance,
In the eager daily dance
Of a mischief manifold;
Brightly
Did she, mocking change and chance,
Plunge in deeps as yet unsounded.

Tootsy
Flashed, and fluttered
Like a bird with broken wing
Back to its perpetual Spring,
With faint footsy.
Half her message was not uttered
To the others, but I know
What she whispered to the snow
And the frost and fairy ring.
Tootsy
Came and went, where roses go—
For I found her window shuttered.

PETSOME.

Petsome—
So I called my pretty boy,
Who was every mother's son—
Aye, each spinster's;
Tumbled here and there, like jetsam
Or the waters' idle toy,
When the tempest work is done.
In old minsters,
I have seen a cherub face
Often with a kindred grace,
Carved in stone that brake in laughter
From the cunning leaf and flower,
Wrinkling,
Twinkling,
And with almost living power;
As though time had no hereafter,
And were a perpetual jest
Mocking, if not manifest.
When he sickened
Still he smiled,
And the suffering only quickened
Mirth that owed no mortal bars;
Finding fun without a measure
In the pain that was his pleasure,
And beguiled

Weary ways, that had no morrow
But of misery and sorrow—
Now he is beyond the stars.

DEAREST.

Dearest
Comes to me, when I am fretting
For the children that are lost,
In the shadow yet uncrost;
Nearest,
If the sun of hope is setting,
And the angry clouds rise up;
Then with baby kisses tost
From her mouth's pure crimson cup
With soft fingers,
She (a presence unforgetting)
Loves and lingers.

Only
Five, but she is calm and clever
With a woman's sober ways;
And I cannot feel the days
Lonely,
Now she makes my life for ever
Full and innocent and sweet,
With the pretty words she prays
And the music of her feet
As they patter;
Hearing, I am tired of never
Angel chatter.

Others
May be warm with deep affection
And are winsome too and white,
But her girlish bosom quite
Mothers
Me and all, who need direction
In the darkness of our grief;
For her faith is infinite,

And her touch a pink relief,
When it travels
O'er the frown, which her detection
Soon unravels.

Dearest
Clings to me though comrades rally
Not as comrades ought to do,
And her notes of comfort coo
Clearest
From the visionless gray valley;
Then she throws her baby arms
Round the breast which troubles woo,
And unveils her choicest charms;
Through the mourners,
Threads her life so musically
Our dim corners.

ROSES AND RUE.

This is the song of the woman,
This is the song of the true,
Dear and divine, and a human
Mingling of roses and rue;
Beautiful, passionate, stately,
Fronting the storm wind sedately
Just as a heaven of blue.
Clear as the light of the morning,
Soft as the shadow of eve
Shut in delights that deceive;
Double the heart and adorning,
Which when we doubt we believe.

This is the song of the sweeting
Wrought by the cunning of years,
Fashioned of God and the meeting
Made with all laughters and tears;
Dainty and delicate, moulded
Madly of loves and enfolded
Deep in misgivings and fears.

Twain as the dawning and star-shine
Strewn on the waters that toss
Up to the foot of a Cross,
Glimpsed for a moment in far shine
Out of some infinite loss.

This is the song of the foremost
Tyrant and toy, and a slave
Crowned whom we serve and adore most
Heedless of gifts and the grave;
Lady of light and the blessing
Clasped in her fatal caressing,
Leaving no remnant to save.
Gently she comes and her motion
Savours of song and desire,
Clothed in a saintly attire
Breathing the purest devotion—
But in her bosom is fire.

This is the song of the woman
Hard as the millstone, and dew
Grudged in its kindness to no man,
Life to the favoured and few;
Loyal and fickle and faithless,
Though with a destiny deathless
Rising her work to renew.
Glorious, lovely, and little,
Now with our fortunes to spend,
Now with a pitiful end
Deeming all sacraments brittle
Bonds for her passion to rend.

STREET BOY.

English boy,
Let me picture as I see you
Sturdy, square and impudent;
Dandled not the silken toy
Of a mother, who would free you

From the rolling in the gutter
And the splendid dirt and splutter,
Which will shake us
Yet and make us
Kings of sea and continent.
Ragged, soiled and rude, and heeding
Little what the weather says
Or the solemn parson prays;
Sometimes bleeding
From the rough-and-tumble strife,
Still your loftiest dream of life;
Always fit
Now for mischief and the danger
Unto which you are no stranger,
Full of cussedness and grit.
Yet we really prize and love you,
Though the language that we hear
Sounds surprising,
And no foreign imp above you
Ever scored by early rising,
Or possessed such follies dear;
Though you are a doubtful joy,
English boy.

COUNTRY GIRL.

English girl,
Shy and saucy, rude and ready
For the error and the stripe;
In a petticoated whirl
Here, and there with footstep steady
Doing little duties bidden,
But for ever though so chidden
Romping-ripe!
Well, I know those honest eyes
Gray and glancing,
Or entrancing
With a soft and sudden flame
As at some detected shame,
Like the light of clouded skies;

And those kissing lips of scarlet
Which Erasmus loved and knew,
When he got that honey-dew
Leaving his dull record starlit.
Yes, beneath the shabby clothes
And the shady touch of grime
Or the crudeness
Sometimes sauced with ugly oaths,
Is a rosebud at its prime—
Nature in her pretty nudeness;
And when floods in anger swirl,
Or the fire is seven times hotter
And the potter
Thrusts in vesels to refine,
You come out unscathed, divine,
English girl.

POLLY.

Polly—
Never was there such a child
Fashioned of her fragile clay,
Full of pure and sweetest folly;
Seldom serious,
Though in all her humours wild
Touched with an unearthly ray,
And mysterious
Glimpses of another land
Always just at her command.
Trouble
Cannot fall upon that face
Which refuses to be sad,
And would turn the darkness glad
(Were it double)
With the brightness of its grace;
Eager, flashing
Freely out because she must
Wreak herself in act or die,
And obeys no earthly tie

Owned by others;
Splashing
Flakes of splendour on the dust
Of these common tasks, that smothers
Our dull efforts as they pine.
Yet her little scoffs and scorns,
Like the thorns
Of the holly,
Bid no stranger arms entwine
Polly.

EPITHALAMIUM.

Lilies she had—
Now give her roses
Spread like the raiment wherein she is clad,
Scattered beneath her whereon she reposes
Gracious and glad;
Crimson and white let them rest on her bosom
Blent with that blossom,
Sweeter because they are there and a part
One with each pulse of her passionate heart;
Sing to her
Lowly and softly, and bring to her
Sleep till the dawn when the shadows depart.

Blessed is she—
Open the sluices
Letting in joy from the founts that are free
Only to lips rosy-ripe for thy juices,
Mystical tree.
O she has passed through the dread of the portal
Out of this mortal,
Into the sacrament deeper than death
Mixed with her being and poured as her breath;
Give to her
Honour, and pray she may live to her
Fulness of peace in the riches of faith.

OLIVE

Olive, kiss me
On my aching breast and brow;
Sweetest, tell me, did you miss me
As I mourned for you till now?
I felt hunger
Day and night, and every hour,
And my life itself grew younger
With the passion and its power.
Let me know
With that pretty mouth above me,
You are not a fleeting show—
Olive, love me.

Olive, call me
By those tender names of old.
Wherewith you didst erst enthrall me
In the scarlet and the gold?
Lips and tresses
Meant to play no common part,
With suggestions of caresses
Stealing in the hardest heart.
Ah, those hands
Which so softly do beset me
Move about yet like commands—
Olive, pet me.

Olive, nearer
Wreathe me as a tendriled vine
With the arms that give me clearer
Glimpses of a fate divine.
Fortune never
Now shall part our happy lot,
Though all winds and ways endeavour
And the world against us plot.
For a thread
Of your yellow hair would find me,
And recover from the dead—
Olive, bind me.

Olive tighter
Still around me cling and close,
With those dark eyes kindled brighter
And the fragrance of the rose.
Through the ages
You and I, in different forms,
Trod together the same stages
And resisted the same storms.
When the vain
Shadow yet in death would fold me,
Through the conquered path of pain—
Olive, hold me.

AT THE ACADEMY.

My dear Poppy, I went to the Pictures
With Papa, who for once had no gout;
Though he uttered some terrible strictures,
On the dresses and studies without.
Never mind! it was fun, and the clothing
After all is a detail to do;
But I think, yet my judgment is nothing,
They should just have a figleaf or two.
Though some artists imagine, that nudity
Is the hallmark of loftier strains;
And forget that (like colours) their crudity
Should be mixed, as said Opie, with brains.

I am no connoisseur, my sweet Mignon,
And I only can paint my own face;
So it's idle to state an opinion,
Which were better on ribands or lace.
But it struck me, on coming from Paris,
That the hues are offensive and stare;
Not so much, though, as poor Sissy Harris,
With the husband whom too many share.
As to seas—well, the blues are outrageous
And like nought in the heavens or earth;
Perhaps seeing such daubs is contagious,
For they gave me “blue devils” for mirth.

There were portraits of men doing duty
In the stiffest of poses and parts,
And some women with all but the beauty
Which atones for the absence of hearts.
And the “Poodle,” dear darling, was present
With the dews of the country and that;
Plus his bride (a prim apple-cheeked peasant)
Who is forty and ugly and fat.
O to think he once loved me and dangled
Half a season or more at my side,
And was caught by a rustic who angled
With the clumsiest sops to his pride.

But I really think Algie is serious,
For a coronet too one can wait;
Though his movements are often mysterious,
And my looks a diminishing bait.
To return to the theme, it's a question
Of the taste and mine may not be true;
I prefer the high art of suggestion,
Which leaves fancy to follow a clue.
Still the “Dancing girl” stood out delicious,
By the President—worth all the rest;
But the fates at the end proved propitious,
And the view of my Algie was best.

HETTY.

Hetty has dark eyes,
Hetty has dark hair;
O Hetty's lips are Paradise,
And breathe the purest air.
Hetty has a way,
Hetty has a plan,
To drive the sorest grief away
And heal the heart of man.
Hetty has a tone,
Hetty has a will,
For Hetty is herself alone
Alike in good and ill.

Hetty has a song,
Hetty has a sigh,
Which tune my spirit free and strong
When no one else is nigh.
Hetty has a tale,
Hetty has a truth,
Which mingle as the nightingale
The magic spells of youth.
Hetty has a look,
Hetty has a smile,
And those that read her fairy book
Learn how she can beguile.

Hetty has a note,
Hetty has a thrill,
And is a moonbeam with a mote
That makes it brighter still.
Hetty has a foot,
Hetty has a face,
To bid the desert nature shoot
And bud with hidden grace.
Hetty has a brow,
Hetty has a breast,
Where angel thoughts in worship bow
And white-winged fancies rest.

Hetty has a pose,
Hetty has a play
Which marry starlight and the rose
To midnight and the day.
Hetty has a touch
Hetty has a taste,
And I who study Hetty much
Yet never saw her haste.
Hetty has a calm,
Hetty has a love
Which bring me alway secret balm
And raise my soul above.

A YEAR AFTER.

Is it true, is it dreaming, my dear?
Is it night, is it day?
You were with me a blessing, last year—
But my pet would not stay;
For she felt her wings growing,
She found new life flowing
And a stronger love called her away.
Ah, the buttercup meadow,
It is now but a shadow,
Where you and I often would play.
Is it true, is it dreaming, my dear?
Is it night, is it day?

Is it winter or summer. my dear?
Is it day, is it night?
For I hear not those beautiful feet,
Making sound more than sight.
Were I only a swallow
I would swift be and follow,
And carry the Spring in my flight.
I should meet, where the rose's
Bridal bosom uncloses
To the honeybee's kiss, my delight.
Is it winter or summer, my sweet?
Is it day, is it night?

RUBY.

If I, dear Ruby, were the rose
That blushes on thy breast,
Then would my life like it unclose
In many rays of rest;
This earth itself would wax the sweeter
And all my rounded work completer,
If by that beauty prest;
Thy gentle touch would quite compose
The tumult of my heart,

And every thought that is a thorn
Could not but then (in thee reborn)
Forget its cruel part.

If I, dear Ruby, only lay
Rose-like upon thy lips
A moment of my weary way
Or felt thy finger tips;
I know the clouds would fly and scatter
And care be but an empty matter,
In love's pure white eclipse;
Another heaven, another day
Would open to these eyes;
The hidden truth, the soul of space,
Would yield its glory in thy grace
From blue infinities.

HERAIS.

Far, far away in the dim mists of time
And stories strange and mute,
Heraïs mingles with the river's chime,
Low-browed and absolute.
Yet now in shade she cometh back to me
Out of the gracious gloom,
A thing of glory lithe and fair and free,
In dark Egyptian bloom.
From this old letter I can build her up,
With all the East engrained;
The half-bared bosom and the lips' red cup,
And fingers henna-stained.
I mark the heaving of the passioned breast,
I scan the scornful pose;

Imperious beauty which relents to rest,
As sinks a summer rose.
I seem to know the curving of that form,
Its supple sinuous grace;
Foreign and yet familiar, like a storm
Of fire in its embrace.

I know that mine have met those glowing arms,
My life entangled hers
And melted in the madness of those charms,
To sounds of dulcimers.
O all the tempest lurking in her smile,
The love akin to hate,
Have been in English lands a golden guile
And bliss re-incarnate.

AN EGYPTIAN BOY.

Thou art the same, Egyptian boy,
As England's own,
A mother's torment and her joy
Of price unknown.
The rippling laughter or the jest
Upon thee lies,
As soft as dew on roses' breast
Beneath our skies.
No playful banter, threatened deed,
Do differ now
In childhood's crude and daring creed
And broken vow.
The pouting word, the petulance,
The candid truth,
Attest in each bright circumstance
Our English youth.
The merry quips, the careless flaws,
The scribbled name
Defying grammar and its laws,
Are still the same.
The love of sport, the hated toil
And study's chain,
The father whom his sons despoil,
Come back again.
Ah, those dear eyes are in the grave,
That sunny smile,
Which saw the sacred lotus wave
Upon old Nile.

CICELY.

Years go by,
Cicely;
But I cannot solve your riddle
Which grows deeper with the days,
And the parting of the ways
Though we loitered at their middle.
Earth and sky,
Cicely,
And no glory sweet and single—
Green of meadow, gray of cloud,
Woven to a wonder proud—
In your graces meet and mingle.

Tell me why,
Cicely,
You have softly, sadly altered.
Am I waning? Have you waxed?
Do the lips, that once relaxed,
Now forget the tune they faltered?
Blossoms fly,
Cicely,
And the freshness and the fragrance,
When the summer time steps on
And its ripeness red is gone,
Will be unremembered vagrance.

Every eye,
Cicely,
Feels the glamour of your glances;
Many a solemn act and end
On those careless looks depend,
Though to you but passing fancies.
Love is shy,
Cicely,
And the loudest plea and longest,
Though it offer bribes of gold
And its gifts be manifold.
Is not (if you heed) the strongest.

Streams run dry,
Cicely;
And at last the flooded river,
Which has wafted on its tide
Toys and treasures to your side,
Will have nothing to deliver.
Ere you cry,
Cicely,
Fondly for the riches banished;
Take the true and honest heart
Now before it can depart,
Or your charms themselves have vanished.

UNA.

Daughter of the golden dreams,
Whose delights of stars and streams
Linked to old forgotten gleams
Make a sweet consistory!
All romance, it laughs and lies
In the glory of those eyes,
Like serene eternities
And twin moons of mystery;
Chivalries that long seemed dead
Breathe their beauty round that head,
While they waken at their tread
Bloom and dew of history.

Una, of such gifts untold
Which no careless looks behold,
One and yet so manifold
With a fair infinity;
Where the worlds divide and part,
With that true and tameless heart
Dost thou stand alone, apart,
In a white virginity;
I could well believe—thy way
Seems above our common clay,
And thy dawn no earthly day—
Thou wert half divinity.

Steeped in perfume of the past
And a magic vague and vast,
Touched by tender lights that last,
Thou art of them amorous;
All the marvels that have been
Making earth more glad and green,
Crown thee wonderful and queen
With a garland glamorous;
And thou hearest yet the song
Low and murmurous and strong,
Which has rolled our race along
Mid the tumult clamorous.

Una, ah, I never knew
Visions granted to the few,
Which thy maiden years renew
With a subtle graciousness;
Echoes that had ceased to sound
Girdle thee with music round,
And unclose each solemn bound
Like the ocean spaciousness;
Thoughts that range for ever far
And beyond the last faint star,
With their golden gates unbar
Thee their dread audaciousness.

DOROTHY.

Our Dorothy is dead,
And yet she cannot truly die;
The earth is brighter for her tread,
And still throbs with the broken tie.
The perfume of her presence
Lives on a loving essence,
A gospel that shall never lie.
O scatter lilies round her
Wherein her faith enwound her,
For she hath entered into rest;
The white flower sleeps, the city weeps,
And she is gathered to God's breast.

Our Beautiful is glad,
That she hath reached the farther shore;
Then why should other souls be sad,
Because a sister went before?
A glory for our guiding
Bursts from her Home of hiding,
And teaches brothers to adore.
But still with us she watches,
And if we hear our latches
A-tremble in the troubled night,
Then passeth by our Dorothy
And lets within a gleam of light.

Our Dorothy was here
But yesterday, and breathed an air
That seemed a finer atmosphere,
And made our meanest portion fair.
She never had her being
In this dull world of seeing,
Too fallen for angels to repair.
Love was her native leaven,
And she who dwelt in heaven
Hath now at last but entered quite
The glory, whence her innocence
Had strayed to show the Infinite.

And so she liveth yet,
A seraph soul that simply came
To kindle (though vain suns had set)
In every heart a vestal flame;
And when the dawn grows crisper
And winds essay to whisper,
Her spirit speaks in joy the same.
She stirs in each pure notion
Of delicate devotion,
And better thoughts that upward rise;
Thus Dorothy, most tenderly,
Opens the gates of Paradise.

ANGELICA.

She is clothed in the beauty of night,
She is glad with the splendour of day,
And more sweet than the visions of sight
Is the happiness winging her way,
In the music of notion;
She has stolen the stars for her eyes
And the darkness was twined in her hair,
While the glory of unrisen skies
On her forehead proclaims she is fair,
As the heart of devotion;
And the earth were not finished or meet,
Without her and the pulse of her feet.

She is blossom of silence and song,
And the breath of the fortunate climes
To which perfumes of passion belong,
And her lips are the rosiest rhymes—
Never dreamed by a poet;
And the dew of the morning is hers,
With the softness of evening and hush
'Twixt the sun and the moon which defers
Its delight with a maidenly blush,
And departs ere we know it;
So we cannot be sure of her spell,
But whatever it be it is well.

On an untravelled path doth she tread
In her virginal vesture and grace,
And the aureole haunting her head
Sheds a shine on the dreariest place,
Like a promise of blessing;
Nothing common or little she seeks,
But a virtue is hid in her hand,
And the sunrise that reddens her cheeks
Had no dawn in our lowlier land,
And is good beyond guessing;
For her soul is an altar in flame,
Burning white with the beauty of shame.

When I pass to her presence, I feel
In a shrine where the shadow is more
Than the noontide, and humbly would kneel
As a penitent come to adore,
Who yet dares not from wonder;
And the sense of a separate lot,
With a life above earthlier law
Haloed round by a charm without spot,
Fills my breast till the gateways of awe
To their depths cleave asunder;
Till I see how Creation was done,
And the angel and human are one.

PANSY.

Pansy went my way
Shy as shadows are and lonely,
Full of pretty thoughts and only
Serious in her play;
Earnest-eyed and coy,
An unmated joy,
Yet with heart of fire ascending
Unto heights of hope unending
In a deathless day;
When the linnet's voice had luted
Answer to the thrush that fluted,
Pansy passed my way.

Pansy looked at me,
With a glance of trouble hidden
Like a child that had been chidden,
But with purpose free;
As a spirit night,
Fallen from native light,
Seek for pity and protection
In some earthlier new affection,
Which could hardly be;
While with throb and hum and quiver
Toiled the town's great flowing river,
Pansy looked at me.

Pansy would not smile,
But her heart had in its keeping
Tears divine that still were sleeping,
And would dream awhile;
Yet a sudden glow
Brake from founts below,
Like a little sunset flushing
All the heaven with rosy rushing,
In unconscious guile.
Though the land was full of laughter,
As if time had no hereafter,
Pansy would not smile.

Pansy did not pass
From my breast which she had captured
And with every charm enraptured,
Like a magic glass;
Mirrored in her eyes
Other earth and skies
Rose a Paradise around me,
Which with deeper blue enwound me
And a greener grass;
When she stole with gracious giving
On my love till then not living,
Pansy did not pass.

EMMELINE.

At times the look of other lands
Shone in her eyes so far away,
For she had heard her Lord's commands
And would not if she could delay.
How might she linger or be glad
With yellow gold or earthly yields,
When but a stranger here who had
A life laid out in broader fields?
She found a daily task to do,
Though every hope and thought was there,
And felt a pilgrim passing through—
For her whole heart dwelt otherwhere.

And while her feet on dusty roads
Walked with the bowed and burdened throng,
And bare her own and alien loads,
She heard on high a sweeter song.
No work of kindness that she did
Was mingled with a petty shame,
But only in God's keeping hid
And never blotted with a name.
The words of comfort that she spake
Seemed of her fulness said and sown,
But bade some sleeping soul awake,
Yet to herself were all unknown.
Confronting death she knew no doubt,
Like some white angel flitting by,
And earth enriched by her gave out
The perfume of that piety.

A GLIMPSE.

'Twas but a glimpse of golden hair,
A little gleam of laughing eyes;
But èver since the world is fair,
With greener earth and bluer skies.
No more; and yet, when ways are rough
Or deeper knowledge brings but pain
And human hearts are false, enough
To guide me through these fashions vain.
I only saw her face was sweet
With limpid look and haloed head,
And music in those rhythmic feet
To move the silence of the dead.
She never marked me as I stood,
Lost in the clamour of the crowd;
But still her fleeting maidenhood,
Spake to my spirit yet more loud.
I knew that we had met before
In other worlds, and would again;
While she had grace I should adore,
And nought but love could thus ordain.

Our lives had mingled in one stream,
And flowed together to a chime
Which was the note of every dream
And inner burden of all Time.
So now I carry with me still
A certain joy, a secret trust,
In union with a fellow will,
Eternal over death and dust.

ENDYMION.

The lush green grasses washed his soiled white feet
With cooling waves of verdure, as he slept,
And kissed his mouth that melted to a smile
Of joy and glory; one blue shaft of light
Shot through the cave and showed its golden gloom,
As shines a good deed through a shadowed life.
Tears, but of rapture, glittered on his eyes
And graced the darkness of those curtained lashes,
Pearl-dropping; and his pillow was the moss,
Brown, yellow, red, and softer than the silk
Tost idly on the beauty of tall queens
Sunk in undress and amorous. He dreamed,
A goddess came to him most wonderful
And ministrant, as though the moon herself
Stept from her purple halls of native night,
With starry robes and native loveliness
Of straining bosom and bright limbs, and drew
Nearer and nearer to his eager arms
And blood that beat like fire within his veins;
Until she touched him with her tender hands,
And all his being gathered to itself
Her passion and its warm deliciousness,
Unveiled. She offered him a dazzling choice,
Empire and realms of majesty and might,
Or riches that the world had never given
Yet to its votaries, or exceeding love
Passing the love of woman; and she laid
Her ripe red lips a seal upon his own,

And left a blushing rose a-flame. But he
Thrust from him wealth and the magnificence
Granted with power and sceptred pomp of kings
And stately use and circumstance, and pageants
Crowned; and aside he put voluptuousness
Of married lives and faiths, and full desire
Drinking its pleasure. But he asked for youth
Perpetual, and the springtide and the spell
Laughing and leaping in the pulse of bliss,
Which mocks us for a moment and is gone
Before we taste those hidden truths unplumbed
And mix ourselves with their deep ecstacies.
Smiling she seemed to answer, and embraced
Once more his ardour with the bursting blossom
Of her own breast; she promised him his prayer,
Conquest of time and gray infirmities
And all the old sad burdens heaped on age
Unequal; but she added the delights
Known not to any, save the sealed and few.
So he slept on and shall for ever sleep,
Awake alone to her high communings,
Though in the world he liveth yet and loves
And with him bears a glorious heart of dreams.

CHRISTABEL.

Happy maiden,
Of the dear and dewy eyes,
Coyly veiled, and sweetly swimming
Like a chalice over-brimming
With its sacred mysteries;
Lit and laden,
Out of the infinities.
If I could but read the pages
Of your looks
As holy books,
I should nearly know as well
But would never, never tell
All the secret of the ages,
Christabel.

Maiden, clothèd
In the beautiful defence
Of a pure and righteous being
And a sense beyond mere seeing,
High above our false pretence,
And betrothèd
To the Truth and Innocence;
When I gaze at you in wonder,
Many a bar
Or bound afar,
Blue abysses, burst asunder;
And I see wherein you dwell
With a peace ineffable,
And our little world thereunder,
Christabel.

Maiden, living
Not in gloom or squalid street,
In a love of larger spaces
And a bliss of golden graces,
With our toys below your feet;
In your giving,
All delights and marvels meet.
You direct my road and often,
When I stray
Or lose the way,
Bring me by a spirit spell
Back from even the fires of hell,
Till my hardest hatred soften,
Christabel.

ROSALIND.

A golden song for her—
The gorgeous Ind
That robes with gossamer
My Rosalind,
Yet cannot find a gem
Of sweetest fire
Worthy to kiss the hem
Of her attire.

And fairest things that die
Could not express,
Save with a transient lie,
Her loveliness;
Which gathers from within
Its purest part,
And claimeth as its kin
God's very Heart;
While lesser graces come
And lightly go
As flowers in May, and some
Like winter snow.
A golden song for her,
Wafted by wind
Of deathless dulcimer—
For Rosalind.

AN EASTBOURNE CAMEO.

My cameo face—
Out of white marble and the moonlight cut,
With sad set lips in purpose hidden shut
And chiselled grace;
O in the turn of that untroubled brow
Attuned to mystery,
And in those gray and dark deliberate eyes
Orbed with no passions that compel us now,
The look that lives in dear dead centuries,
I gaze on history;
And backward roll in fire and mist the gates,
Like frozen fates.

My classic face—
Ah, if that mouth that were a monarch's toy
Could speak, its words would be an iron joy
For armed embrace!
That columned neck with its imperial pose
Of rare relenting,
Would match the rhythmic movement of Queen's hands

Customed to sport with battle's blood-red rose,
With gestures all a conqueror's commands
And crowned consenting.
The feet might sometimes fall, but never fly,
Like destiny.

My cameo face—
As cold and calm as wintry northern skies,
And yet with all the possibilities
Of tropic space;
Thy hate is a hot thunderbolt, to strike
Through worlds resistance;
And the wide orbit of thy strong great love,
In gloom and gleam and death and life alike,
Heedless of paths below or powers above,
Forestalls the distance.
Yet more than summer's richest heat and rest,
Inflames thy breast.

My classic face—
In this poor little squalid day of night,
A glimpse of ancient beauty and its might,
And prouder place!
Thou art the type of a supremer plan,
A revelation
Of the undying past, a potent charm,
Possessor of a secret talisman
To kindle thought and steel the drooping arm—
One inspiration.
I drink of thee, as fashions flutter by
Eternity.

WINIFRED.

Rare and red, Winifred,
Winifred,
Are those rosebud lips that say
Loves and blisses
And sweet kisses
Are not meant for every day.

But the bloom, with scarlet scorn,
Hides the thorn—
We suspect no spiteful powers;
And caresses,
Like new dresses,
Sometimes pinch when they are ours.

Tears are shed, Winifred,
Winifred,
Often on your careless road
Paved with laughter;
And thereafter
Toil our lives, with weary load.
No one ever saw you grave,
Though the slave
Of your fancy for a while;
And the burden
Was his guerdon
Only, with a mocking smile.

Lightly led, Winifred,
Winifred,
Is your footstep that will stray
Into angles
Odd and tangles,
From the broad and beaten way;
Eager for illicit spoil
Without toil,
Glamour of forbidden grapes,
Lessons, needless
Learned by heedless
Thirst for devious acts and scrapes.

O that head, Winifred,
Winifred,
Posed with such unconscious art,
Stirs the fancies
Or romances
Now of many a foolish heart.
Fair and fickle you may be,
Not to me;

Others fondly talk and try,
But your graces'
Coy embraces
Open to my flattery.

WENDELINE.

Wendeline has laughing eyes
Blue as heaven and only hers,
And the soul of music lies
In her voice, that ripples over
From red lips as red as clover,
Soft as spirit dulcimers.
No one ever saw her frown,
Or imperious and utter
Words beyond a gentle flutter,
Like the waft of angel wings;
Wears her auburn head a crown,
Better than the gold of kings.

Wendeline is never sad,
And she knows the secret clue
Which the early maidens had,
When sereness was their nature
Stamped with joy's own legislature,
And the roses hid the rue.
Ah, and singing winds her way
With a pretty shake and shiver
Like the running of a river,
And because her gladness must;
So my footsteps cannot stray,
In the triumph of her trust.

Wendeline is still the same,
Though o'er others falls a storm,
Setting troubled hearts a flame;
Then like honey-due her quiet
Gives my soul delicious diet,
From her white unruffled form.

Yea, she seems enthroned on high,
Far beyond our spots and splashes
And the common fuss and flashes,
Which distrub an earthly breast;
And the heaven itself comes night,
In the rapture of her rest.

Wendeline is balm and bliss
To my fretful mind and means,
And the pureness of her kiss
Is a private revelation
And the richest inspiration,
When my doubt upon her leans.
Patiently she leads me on,
And without a breath of bustle
As the leaflets sigh and rustle,
Should a little wind upfly;
And where she before has gone,
All the world is sweet thereby,

YOLANDE.

Up from its green and gracious plinth
Arose the gentle hyacinth,
And made a carpet like the sky;
As if in blessing thus it broke,
And climbed with its blue altar smoke
To God and His eternity.
Yolande was by me, young Yolande,
The very sweetest and the meetest
Of all the maids that are discreetest,
Whose every look was a command.
And when the belfry counted seven
I claspt a fetter round her wrist,
As walked we through that mimic heaven—
Love-in-a-mist.

It nodded lowly on its bed
And laughed to feel our loving tread,
While forth we wandered, twain and one;

The earth had vanished from our gaze,
It glimmered out of purple haze
And time seemed now for ever done.
Yolande was listening to my tale,
Yolande the brightest and the lightest
Of fairy forms that are the slightest—
She listened with red cheek turned pale.
The hyacinth in gentlest motion
Was by the amorous zephyr kist,
As our lips met of mere devotion—
Love-in-a-mist.

It bowed approval while we went,
As through the opening firmament
And in the shadow and the shine;
For clouds and gleams most softly set
The virtue of the violet
Beneath our feet, and did entwine.
Yolande was with me, fond and fair,
Yolande the surest and the purest
Of nun-like girls that are demurest—
We stept not upon earth, but air.
And in the bosom of blue glory
Wè only had to look and list
Unto our hearts, which told one story—
Love-in-a-mist.

We heeded not or bloom or plinth,
But trod the heavenly hyacinth,
As though we voyaged in the stars;
The walls of space had sundered quite,
And we were in the infinite
Outside all petty bounds and bars.
Yolande was near me, my Yolande,
The coy and clinging soul of singing,
Full-blooded, ripe and summer bringing—
And nothing more could I demand.
Our tie was not an earthly tether,
For all the world was amethyst;
And thus we walked, and walk together—
Love-in-a-mist.

OLGA.

Tall and twenty,
Bright and fair,
Kisses on her lips in plenty
And red gold her haloed hair;
For the winning and the wooing,
And the wonder and undoing
Of all hearts beyond repair.
White and winsome
With dark blue
Eyes, as fathomless as in some
Fairyland a fountain's hue,
Where the fancied is the true.

Soft and pliant
Potter's clay,
Yet with purpose more reliant
Than the mountain's rocky stay.
Earth and spirit meet and marry,
And her cheeks just rose-lit carry
Promise of diviner day.
Cool as withy,
But a fire
Never seen on mortal stithy,
When the passion of desire
Grows through flesh and blood attire.

Pure and distant
As a dream,
But to every one assistant
In the night without a gleam;
Then with daintiest love diffusive,
If at other times elusive
As the rainbow on a stream.
Grandly daring,
When the hour
Strikes, in charity unsparing
With a faith that bursts in flower—
And, though weakness, still a power.

Strong and tender,
With a hand
Eager always to surrender,
While as ready for command;
With the shapeliest neck and shoulder,
And if shy yet waxing bolder
When the greatest odds withstand.
Blessed and blessing,
Fair and bright
With a figure coy, caressing,
Robed in beauty as a right—
Heart's desire and world's delight.

IRENE.

Irene stands
Before me (as it seems) in prayer,
With parted lips and lifted brows
And joy of claspt consenting hands;
Which find in hope a happy stayer,
To strengthen vows.
Within her eyes,
That catch the beauty of the morning
And breathe the blessing of the light,
The shadow of the evening lies;
When she shall wear the sweet adorning,
Of perfect sight.

Irene dwells
In other lands and upper spaces,
And rounded worlds of radiant dreams;
She cannot feel our earthly spells,
Because she follows fairer graces
And distant gleams.
The tidal rush
And roar of common cares and questions
May never move that gentle heart,
Nor wake a single sigh or blush;
She owns no pleasure's fond suggestions,
And lives apart.

Irene's home
Is in the suffering lives of others,
Not gilded bubbles that we raise;
And in the sacred temple dome
Of Him who likes to name us brothers,
With simple praise.
They vainly try
To lure from holy service often
That soul, which seeks in bliss above
Her native land eternity;
But then her great eyes dimly soften,
In utter love.

Irene waits,
As one who watches for the calling
Of a dear Master who is night;
She heeds no storm or bitter straits
And stoops not to the world's enthralling,
But gazes high.
In rapturous rest
She sees, beyond our cloudy curtain,
Delights that none but angels know;
And gathers to her virgin breast
All sorrows that, with faith uncertain.
Would sink below.

MAUDIE.

Did the waters tell you, as you passed,
All the secrets of their glancing way?
Is the magic of the moonbeam glassed,
In those eyes, delicious green and gray?
Did the woodland's lisp of many leaves
Breathe into your brow its pensive air,
And below the beauty of its eaves
Teach you to forget that you were fair?
Did the breadths of rolling moors and mounts
Pour their wildness in your dancing feet,
And the upward flash of living founts
Form those woven words so crystal sweet?

Child of Nature and mine inmost heart,
Maudie, it is well to watch that face;
Which reflects, with its unconscious art,
Every gift that is a hidden grace.
Ah, each picture of the golden cup
Plays about the surface and in sight,
As in glory it goes rippling up
And runs over into love and light.
Thou art comrade of the devious brook
Pushing on its path through bell and bine,
Blazoned here and there with laughing look
Out from mists of moss and depths divine.

Thou art closer to the heart of things
And dost catch the throbbing and the beat,
The sweet laughter and low murmurings
Of the eternal childhood at its seat;
Thou has learned the riddle of the rose—
How it spends its bosom in a blush,
And the petals fragrantly unclose
Dew and honey in the evening hush;
Thou wast one for ever with the spell
Dropt by pansies from their wondering eyes,
When the foxglove rings its matin bell
And they mirror back the opening skies.

Whisper to me, Maudie, what the lark
Chanteth highest when the heavens are dim
And the dawn seems wedded to the dark,
Wavering up like an embodied hymn.
Let me also with thy wisdom know
That soft music of the lower world,
Drunk by love that sees the grasses grow
As their shoots in shadow are uncurl'd.
I am sure that God Himself is near
Thee and every pretty way of thine,
And the thoughts that only angels hear
In thy breast with life and death entwine.

ISOBEL.

Isobel is fair, Isobel is true.
Isobel has serious eyes,
Like the gray of English skies
Melting into blue.
Sober seems her walk and sedate her smile,
And her laughter is caught up
Deftly as a spilling cup,
With unconscious guile.
Nowise may she quite all forget the due
Paid to womanhood, and charms
Yielding not too ready arms—
Isobel is true.

Isobel is calm, Isobel is kind,
And the Sabbath in her voice
Rises only to rejoice
With a modest mind.
Easily she bends in the passing play,
But she never can relent
Fully, if she does consent
To an idle way.
But to error vain she is fondly blind,
And remembers not the sin
Of a neighbour so akin—
Isobel is kind.

Isobel is pure, Isobel is good,
And her very sight the sayer
Of a music more than prayer,
White as maidenhood.
With a careful step and straight on she moves
To her predetermined end,
Half an angel, all a friend,
As each trial proves.
When I bare my cross she beside it stood,
And the burden that must be
Fell on her instead of me—
Isobel is good.

100

Isobel is strong, Isobel is true,
And the beauty of her creed
Only from another's need
Takes its heavenly hue.
Glad at heart she is, though for ever grave,
And the native melody
Of a near eternity
Formed that willing slave.
To a wandering soul she is just the clue,
Guiding softly, surely back
Unto rest and out of wrack—
Isobel is true.

LOVE IN IDLENESS.

Bright the water-way went down,
With a laughing and a lisping
Through the reeds that nodded crisping,
Past the trouble of the town;
Past the leaden smoke and smother,
Where to man no man is brother,
In the torment of the strain;
Past the red kine in the shallow,
And the poppies of the plain;
By the meadow grass and mallow—
There, in white and pink undress,
Lay sweet Love-in-Idleness.

In a lily cup she lay,
'Tween the shadow and the shiver
Of the ripple on the river,
Where the sunshine fell in spray;
Half in gloom and half in gleaming,
Not asleep and yet a-dreaming
Of the life of long-ago;
And her pretty lips were pouted,
As she saw her grace below;
Which was picture oft she doubted,
Which (as soft as a caress)
Was sweet Love-in-idleness.

101

SWEET-LOOKING AND SWEET-LIVING.

Sweet-looking walked upon the green hillside,
In beauty and the perfectness of powers;
And heeded not the harms that would betide
Sad sisters, as she gathered only flowers;
She decked herself with garlands as a Queen,
Careless of kin, while trouble rolled between.

Sweet-living, in the valley dark and low,
Gazed not above at unconjectured joys;
She heard the winds of sorrow round her blow,
In bitter blasts, and had no time for toys;
She was too burdened with her brother's night,
To know the world was wonderful and bright.

Sweet-looking drank of pleasure's golden cup,
In jewelled ease, and wandered at her will;
While praise and honour at her tread rose up,
And shielded her from every shade of ill;
But yet her heart found nothing but would fleet,
Though all the earth was lying at her feet.

Sweet-living laboured in the din and dust,
And recked not that her lonely lot was rough
Or she should banquet richly on a crust,
If sick and needy souls might have enough;
But in her breast there burned a sacred fire,
And opened heaven at her unasked desire.

A BROWN STUDY.

It was just a delicious arrangement in brown,
Every light, every shade I loved best;
The bright hair in its breadth looked a glorious crown,
And of course she was daintily drest;
Her complexion
Was all the exacting could ask,
And reflexion
Not veiled by a simpering mask
Shadowed out in the pout and the pose of resolve;

102

And one pendulous hand,
Which seemed formed to command,
Beat in time and in chime with the thought to evolve.

And so brown was her study it clothed her like eve
With an atmosphere subtle and sad,
And the twilight though past seemed reluctant to leave
That dear face with its beauty to add;
Was she frowning,
At fancies that troubled her brain?
Was it Browning,
Who brought her enigmas of pain?
For a poem was there and was perfect and deep
As the seer ever told,
And like oracles old
Her lips moved with the murmurs of infinite sleep.

Sweetly brown were her eyes, softly brown the pure skin,
Golden brown the locks nothing could bind,
And the curve of the shapely imperious chin
On the brownest of fichus reclined;
Yes, and russet
The mantle that lay like a cloud,
And each gusset
If seen would with tan have been proud;
And the hue of the true nut was tenderly laid
On the delicate cheek
With no pigment to seek,
And did shine in the line of her sinuous braid.

O the blush of the apple in autumn was breathed
In the curious folds of her gown,
And brown shades were her dimples and suns that had wreathed
Her young presence had painted it brown;
As if nature
Had wrought her of freshness and fire,
Till her stature
Attained to completed desire;
In that crucible fashioned of night and the day,

103

As they glimmered and gleamed,
In her wonder she dreamed
Of the splendour of earth and her virginal way.

SILVER AND GOLD.

I madly loved a maiden, and beautiful was she
With every blessing laden that exquisite may be;
For I was simply human and loved her O too well,
And she a wondrous woman who drew me with a spell;
But vernal laughed her graces and winter left me old,
My head had silver traces, her heart was unmixed gold.

I offered her my plenty, my acres and my all,
Though unto sweet-and-twenty the grandest gifts looked small,
When the whole world seemed lying a plaything at her feet
And rosy hours a-flying were winged music sweet;
For I was so terrestrial and felt the mortal tie,
And she the pure celestial who could not ever die.

I did her service daily with joy and she knew who,
And honoured whims as gaily as faithful man might do;
Her road I paved with pleasure and let her rise on me
To loftier modes and measure while made more fair and free;
But in bright future's dwelling she counted not the past,
Which still was all my telling and shadows on me cast.

I wooed her long and humbly with every homage due,
With open speech and dumbly in ministrations true;
I wearied not in kindness, I wanted not in speed,
If she would cheer my blindness and satisfy my need;
But hers the dewy petal and mine the sere leaf cold,
And I was silver metal and she was nought but gold.

104

POPPY.

We have many more gracious
Or courtly and grand,
And their lives are as spacious
As queens' who command;
To them honour comes surely,
They revel securely
In the riches or rank that is theirs at their will;
And the beauty lies lightly
Upon them and brightly,
And they tap the sweet sources that give them their fill;
But then this is no copy—
The original Poppy.

Ah, her colour is glorious,
Convincing and clear;
While her eyes are victorious,
And strangers to fear.
With a welcome (requited)
For all uninvited,
She is friendly and fairweather even in storm;
Like the breath of the mountains,
Like the laugh of the fountains,
Moves her presence a glad unconventional form.
When the mothers are shoppy,
She is ever true Poppy.

We have darlings by dozens
Delightful to see,
And the daintiest cousins
With whom we agree.
There is Alice and Ethel
Who kneels in Great Bethel,
And is said to have cooed on the minister's lap;
We know Bridget, and Betty
Precocious and pretty,
And the “Baby” who would be offended at pap;
But their heads are too moppy,
And unlike my dear Poppy.

105

She is O quite delicious
And always the same,
Not the least bit suspicious
And perfectly tame;
If you stroke her but rightly
And ever so slightly,
She will purr and be pleasant and ask it again;
It you go to St. Saviour's,
Her model behaviour's
Such a sight as the angels themselves would ordain.
She is really tip-toppy,
The original Poppy.

THE CAPTIVE PRINCE.

Bright boy, some wicked fairy spell
Was surely thrown on thee
Some night, when magic slumber fell
And bound thy spirit free;
While evil sorcery plied its power,
And laid a shadow on the flower
That should have grown to grace unknown,
With all its native deed and dower.
And for a season under this
Thou art in captive keeping,
Nor can a mother's prayer or kiss
Yet break that charmèd sleeping.

Thou art not, what the Maker meant
That splendid frame to show,
A rock whereon one might have leant
When winds in anger blow;
A shelter for a weary life,
If suffering came with cruel knife
And sowed the years with bitter tears—
A haven from stormy strife;
An ark to succour in his dread
The toiler on the billow,
And for some sweet young golden head
A more than silken pillow.

106

The spring is frozen at its source
When it would outward flow,
And scatter light along its course
For thirsty lives below.
The heavy hand of sickness lies
Upon the darkened brow and eyes,
And in thy breast gives sore unrest
To all the fair eternities.
In these thou hast a native part,
Among the suns not risen;
But though they murmur at thy heart,
They cannot break the prison.

But someday thou wilt surely wake,
To find the shadow set
That hid the aureole thou must take,
And be my hero yet.
Then that enchanted life, which durst
Now hardly move, shall breathe and burst
Forth into song and sweep along
In music all its barriers curst,
Till we who nurse our cold desires
With empty strains or stitching;
Shall kindle thus forgotten fires
At thy young brave bewitching.

WINIFRED.

Elusive maiden, oft I try
If love can pierce the mystery
Which wraps thee like a curtain,
As dim as deep Infinity
Whose shine is shade uncertain.
What art thou, dearest? Maid or Sphinx,
Sweet daughter, with such curious links
Built up of silence, mated
With sleep and snow and moonlight glow,
For some dark purpose fated?
And, in those gray unfathomed eyes,
The enigma of the ages lies.

107

I sometimes wonder, if thou art
Indeed a child of me and part,
With airs so shy and mocking
And that impenetrable heart
Sweet riddle for unlocking.
Thou mayest be a creature lent,
To sport in pleasures innocent
Awhile with me and others;
And then someday wilt fly away,
To join thy fairy brothers.
For always, when I think thee mine
The most, deceptions round thee twine.

I never, if I plotted hard,
Once caught thee truly off thy guard
And with the mask divested;
Nor found a little door unbarred,
With entrance not arrested.
And while thou art in slumber set,
The mask is deepest on thee yet
And sure as arms of iron;
Yes, in thy dreams, no treacherous gleams
Tell what they do environ.
Though fortune serves me well or skill,
Between us is the shadow still.

Thou livest in another land,
While free of this whereon I stand
Which holds not thy affection;
And, if I touch a human hand,
I know not its direction.
A veil, a mist, a message lost
Reveal a gulf by me uncrost
And far untravelled spaces;
I cannot spell, who love thee well,
The meaning of thy graces.
And when the glamour I would grasp,
I find but nothing in my clasp.

108

UNFLEDGED.

My Birdie, now upon the edge
Of larger life,
But hugging still the last home ledge
Beyond the strife;
Ere venturing farther higher on,
As other playmates forth have gone
Into the years;
And trembling on the wider scope
Of unimaginable hope,
Illumed by tears;
Yet dost thou stay each ardent wing,
And to the nest and shadow cling

But thou art forming for the flight
Secure at length,
Though facing the rude north or night
In virgin strength;
Equipt with that which cannot fail,
Though it may sometimes err and ail
From mingled good,
The gentle and most awful power
Which is our God's divinest dower—
Of maidenhood.
Then thou, if sadly, shalt be spared
To leave the shelter, when prepared.

My nestling, I am sure how fleet
Thou wouldest fly
Abroad in youth's uncharted sweet
Infinity;
Nor do I wish to prison long
Thy pretty path of love and song,
When truly fit:
Nay, I would speed thy passage more,
To reach a new and vaster shore
And gaily flit;
But outside flints are fiercely wedged,
And still thy bosom is unfledged.

109

O just a little watch and wait
The fuller times,
Although this refuge be more strait
Than distant climes;
Thy feathers yet shall fairer grow,
And that dear heart of music know
A richer tune;
Each hour shall gather beauty, till
The coldest winter months of ill
Are ever June.
I would not keep thy presence bright,
When ready for another's light.

MY LOST CHILD.

I had a child, a daughter sweet
As sunshine, milk and roses;
And ever-new shy poses,
Made music of her tinkling feet.
She wove her girdling golden charms
About my weary bosom,
Which seemed to bud and blossom,
Beneath the touch of baby arms.
And many a midnight black was light
With her young face's story,
And many a day was glory
Read in her features radiant sight.

But now, alas, the child has fled,
Who was so bright and moving
And always fondly proving
Fresh little arts of hand or head.
She comes no longer to my door,
With gentle foolish questions
Or innocent suggestions,
Nor patters yet about the floor.
Nor is the carpet on the stair
Turned into Jacob's ladder,
And all the world is sadder
Without her flashing presence fair.

110

The form abides though strangely dimmed,
But she has quite departed—
The true and tender-hearted,
With that pure forehead halo-rimmed.
It answers to no word of mine
Or fatherly endearance,
Despite the gay appearance—
The fingers have forgot to twine.
The locks may almost be the same,
The white rose-blush complexion;
But where the old reflexion,
In gray eyes like a sunshine flame?

I fancy in that comely shape
Some evil imp has entered,
Most ugly and self-centered,
And let the pretty soul escape.
For if some beauties linger yet
And grace the goodly building,
They seem more like the gilding
Upon a life whose sun has set.
But, in the bitter times to be,
I trust that young affection
In richer resurrection,
Will at the last return to me.

I cannot tell you, where or when
My child was darkly banished
And like a vision vanished,
Out of the kind familiar ken.
One moment tightly in my grasp
I held her warm and willing,
All heart and fluff and frilling—
The next, she mocked my wildest clasp.
O yes, I compass with my hands
The semblance of my dearest,
As close as is the nearest—
But it is grave or swaddling bands.

Perhaps the daughter, to my cares
And burden of sore grieving

111

Sent with a soft relieving,
Came as an angel unawares.
She found my narrow home too small
For upward-pointed pinions,
And to her own dominions
Flew when she heard her sisters call.
My heart at night does often thrill,
Believing she is present—
As ever pure and pleasant—
In loving dreams I keep her still.

TALLER THAN THE TALLEST.

She was taller than the tallest
And her face was more than fair,
While the gold and sunlight mingled
With a life that through her tingled,
In the glory of her hair;
And she smiled upon the smallest,
Like a queen with royal air.
For she felt her kin in meanness,
And in commonest uncleanness
Could perceive the angel hid—
As beneath the coffin lid
Peeps the whiteness of the rose,
Out of deaf and dumb repose—
Though the curse of forms forbid.

She was sweeter than the sweetest
And her mouth a crimson cup,
Whereat love the real refiner
And of hope the best diviner
Might of dew and honey sup;
And, in music, did the meetest
Words caressingly rise up.
It was just the gentle flowing
Of her kindness, ever owing
Debts of sympathy to all;
Which as morning light must fall
Upon others and would strike
Both the strong and weak alike,
With one benediction's call.

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She was purer than the purest,
And her life a stainless chart
Lay wide open to the traces
Of the best and broadest graces,
Which write beauty on the heart;
And they led her by the surest
Way, that is unknown to art.
Nothing more could add or heighten
Charms that hourly seemed to brighten,
As the blossoms in the day
With the pretty beams at play;
And no evil left a mark,
While no shadow could make dark
Modesty that held the sway.

She was greater than the greatest,
With her brow a vestal throne
Showing every shy expression
And the tenderest confession
Of high charity's true tone;
While her carriage was sedatest,
And befitted her alone.
For beneath the woman's vesture
And betrayed in every gesture
Was a touch of something more,
In the dignity she bore:
And she walked among us queenly
In a love that lived serenely,
As none ever did before.

AN ARRANGEMENT IN GREEN.

Hazel her eyes with a glimmer of green,
Tawny her beautiful hair
Breaking like foam from a cincture unseen,
Conscious of course it was fair;
Soft with a hint of the seaweed's own tint
Tangled in shadows and lost,
Tumbled by wind that had travelled from Ind
Only for that to be tossed;

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Ruffled as seawaves that leap to the light
Dropt by the moonbeams and caught,
Rippled and stippled in hues of delight
Painted by passion untaught.

Pretty her pose in its triumph of green
Bursting like buds from their shell,
Carried to conquests befitting a queen,
Rhythmic in swaying or swell;
Breathed by a form that could feature the storm
Truly as evening and calm,
Bearing a hand with the air of command
Rich in its fate-written palm;
Showing the lines of a womanly shape
Meet for most passionate loves,
Reflex of character read in her cape
As in her glances and gloves.

Perfect her dress with its glamour of green
Graded in texture and tone,
Glad with the graces of all that has been
Pleasant or daintily shone;
Sweet as the plumes which the sunset illumes—
Fitting so closely and well,
But with each charm of the bosom or arm
Speaking a different spell;
Blent in one harmony not to be told
Lightly by masculine lips,
Rounded and bounded by beauty and gold
Right to her dear finger tips.

I to this comely arrangement in green
Decked like the springtide in flowers,
Rifted by grass and its verdure between,
Bent as disfranchised my powers;
Sometimes a look the reward or a book
Humbly upheld by her side,
Sometimes a frown or a whisk of her gown
Gathered in haste from the tide;
Yes, and when once (though the season was Lent)

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Fortune erected a screen,
All I remembered was raptures and scent
Drowned in a glory of green.

TO MY HELIOTROPE.

One of the light-bearers, one of the true
Maidenly might-bearers winning a clue
Out of the darkness and out of the starkness
Made by misgiving and dreary not-living,
Into the open and infinite blue;
Happy as hope,
Heliotrope!
Always, my Wendeline, timidly turning
Forth from the gray shadows up to the day,
And with thy purity altar-wise burning
Climbing the slope,
Heliotrope!

Others unwomanly cleave to the dust,
Not as thou humanly lifting their trust
Higher and cherishing charms beyond perishing,
Lured by the glimmer of earth that grows dimmer
And by its riches that gather of rust;
Larger thy scope,
Heliotrope!
Sunshine within thee compels thee to follow
Only the ray of the unsetting day,
Leaving the glare of delights that are hollow;
Daughter of hope,
Heliotrope!

THE MOSS ROSE.

I found it first,
When wandering in a wood
Like God's green ocean;
In quest of something that would slake my thirst
For beauty born of flowers and maidenhood,
And deep devotion.

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A cup it was of gracious pink
And perfect pose,
In shade uncertain;
Whereat no mouth had learned to drink
Or rend the curtain,
A virgin-sweet moss-rose.

I dared to touch
The wonder of that stem,
And try the chalice;
Because its moment love would venture much,
Although I marked the thorns that made a hem
Around of malice.
And I was stabbed by many a spear's
Unsparing arms,
Which kept it hidden;
And wrung from me reluctant tears
For joys forbidden,
Those shy and sheltered charms.

I yearned to taste
The kindness of that cup,
So dimly folded;
The passion of me with its heedless haste,
Most beautiful, in my hot heart stood up,
Unto it moulded.
I saw the reddening of those lips
From me withdrawn,
Too close and curling;
And seemed to hear through that eclipse
Bright waters purling,
To greet the blushing dawn.

Nearer I came,
And every thorn in bloom
Ere word was spoken,
And secret fire from its great heart of flame
Which gleamed from all its greenery and gloom,
Had gladly broken.
And past the coy protecting cold,

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My eager thirst
To love the leaven
Rushed on, and gathered in its hold
The dews of heaven—
Whereon I feasted first.

ANGEL WINGS.

If I give Him all my pretty things,
Heaps of little toys and treasures
And these foolish baby pleasures,
Will He fasten on the angel wings?
For I dream at dark of flying,
Though by day it's useless trying
And it only ends in crying—
But I want so the bright angel wings.

If I bring dear Father our gray Poll
Or the ball of crimson leather,
Might he not allow one feather—
If I added too my Christmas doll?
Surely for a piece of candy,
With the kitten white and sandy
And beribboned like a dandy,
He would do this—with my Christmas doll?

Once I took no sugar in my cup,
And was quite two minutes praying
Down upon my knees, and saying
What nice treats I really could give up;
If he would, ere I got older,
Not believe me rude or bolder
Than was right, and let my shoulder
Blossom out—what would I not give up?

He loves children, held them in His hand
And bestowed on them a blessing
Sweeter than the best caressing—
But I am not sure He understands;

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Though He said no jot or tittle
Was unseen, we are so little
And of texture weak and brittle,
That I doubt He always understands.

If I knew where angel wings were kept,
In what quiet corner hidden,
Though I should be sorely chidden
I would take the smallest while He slept;
And among those many shining
Plumes of grace and glory twining,
Far beyond all earth's refining—
He would never miss them, while He slept.

If I offer all that is my own
With my brother's who can spare it
And will sometimes even share it,
Then I might awake and find me flown;
And perhaps my tears to smiling
Yet may turn from ways of wiling
And discover games beguiling,
When on wings within me I have flown.