Classic Poem

I

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
 All is blue again
 After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
 Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were grey.

II

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
 With a foaming head
 On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit's cell;
 Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.

III

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,—
 When the wind would edge
 In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go—
 Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
 We would try and trace
 One another's face
In the ash, as an artist draws;
 Free on each other's flaws,
How we chattered like two church daws!

V

What's in the ‘Times’?—a scold
At the Emperor deep and cold;
 He has taken a bride
 To his gruesome side,
That's as fair as himself is bold:
 There they sit ermine-stoled,
And she powders her hair with gold.

VI

Fancy the Pampas' sheen!
Miles and miles of gold and green
 Where the sunflowers blow
 In a solid glow,
And—to break now and then the screen—
 Black neck and eyeballs keen,
Up a wild horse leaps between!

VII

Try, will our table turn?
Lay your hands there light, and yearn
 Till the yearning slips
 Through the finger-tips
In a fire which a few discern,
 And a very few feel burn,
And the rest, they may live and learn!

VIII

Then we would up and pace,
For a change, about the place,
 Each with arm o'er neck:
 'Tis our quarter-deck,
We are seamen in woeful case.
 Help in the ocean-space!
Or, if no help, we'll embrace.

IX

See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest!
 'Tis a huge fur cloak—
 Like a reindeer's yoke
Falls the lappet along the breast:
 Sleeves for her arms to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

X

Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,
 Or I tint your lip
 With a burnt stick's tip
And you turn into such a man!
 Just the two spots that span
Half the bill of the young male swan.

XI

Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow
 With his hand's first sweep
 Put the earth to sleep:
'Twas a time when the heart could show
 All—how was earth to know,
'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro?

XII

Dearest, three months ago
When we loved each other so,
 Lived and loved the same
 Till an evening came
When a shaft from the devil's bow
 Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and foe!

XIII

Not from the heart beneath—
'Twas a bubble born of breath,
 Neither sneer nor vaunt,
 Nor reproach nor taunt.
See a word, how it severeth!
 Oh, power of life and death
In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!

XIV

Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
 Me, your own, your You,—
 Since, as truth is true,
I was You all the happy past—
 Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?

XV

Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
 How I look to you
 For the pure and true
And the beauteous and the right,—
 Bear with a moment's spite
When a mere mote threats the white!

XVI

What of a hasty word?
Is the fleshly heart not stirred
 By a worm's pin-prick
 Where its roots are quick?
See the eye, by a fly's foot blurred—
 Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain's coat of curd!

XVII

Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care?
 'Tis the world the same
 For my praise or blame,
And endurance is easy there.
 Wrong in the one thing rare—
Oh, it is hard to bear!

XVIII

Here's the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows:
 We shall have the word
 In a minor third
There is none but the cuckoo knows:
 Heaps of the guelder-rose!
I must bear with it, I suppose.

XIX

Could but November come,
Were the noisy birds struck dumb
 At the warning slash
 Of his driver's-lash—
I would laugh like the valiant Thumb
 Facing the castle glum
And the giant's fee-faw-fum!

XX

Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped
 We can stand apart,
 Heart dispense with heart
In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,—
 Oh, the world's hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!

XXI

Each in the crypt would cry
‘But one freezes here! and why?
 When a heart, as chill,
 At my own would thrill
Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
 Heart, shall we live or die?
The rest, . . . settle by-and-by!’

XXII

So, she'd efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
 It is twelve o'clock:
 I shall hear her knock
In the worst of a storm's uproar,
 I shall pull her through the door,
I shall have her for evermore!