(IRIS.)
DADDY dear, I'm only four
And I'd rather not be more:
Four's the nicest age to be--
Two and two, or one and three.
All I love is two and two,
Mother, Fabian, Paul and you;
All you love is one and three,
Mother, Fabian, Paul and me.
Give your little girl a kiss
Because she learned and told you this.
Bees say, winds say, birds say and all trees say
you were born on 8th May
in a joyous morning
when all nightingales were singing
with sweet melody to celebrate your sweet birth
on earth.
O my Love, my red Princess Rose,
since then, my day comes and day goes,
night comes and passes night,
I, in darkness or light,
adore you and take your sweet smell
and to the world your sovereignty I tell.
Birds sing "I love you, love" the whole day through,
And not another song can they sing right;
But, singing done with, loving's done with quite,
The autumn sunders every twittering two.
And I'd not have love make too much ado
With sweet parades of fondness and delight,
Lest iterant wont should make caresses trite,
Love-names mere cuckoo ousters of the true.
Oh heart can hear heart's sense in senseless nought,
And heart that's sure of heart has little speech.
What shall it tell? The other knows its thought.
When the wind blows her veil
And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
From the woes I bewail
Of love and hereafter:
When the wind blows her veil
I cease, I turn pale.
How often our beliefs more than our doubts
Ruin and mar us here, clog the soul's feet,
And shackle the heart's best impulses so,
That for Heaven's love we do inhuman things,
And with a (Unclear quietude
Hear babes moan in the everlasting fire!
Sometimes up out of this land
a legend begins to move.
Is it a coming near
of something under love?
Love is of the earth only,
the surface, a map of roads
leading wherever go miles
or little bushes nod.
Not so the legend under,
fixed, inexorable,
deep as the darkest mine
the thick rocks won't tell.
As fire burns the leaf
and out of the green appears
the vein in the center line
and the legend veins under there,
Love's aftermath! I think the time is now
That we must gather in, alone, apart
The saddest crop of all the crops that grow,
Love's aftermath.
Ah, sweet,--sweet yesterday, the tears that start
Can not put back the dial; this is, I trow,
Our harvesting! Thy kisses chill my heart,
Our lips are cold; averted eyes avow
The twilight of poor love: we can but part,
Dumbly and sadly, reaping as we sow,
Love's aftermath.
I GOTTA lov' for Angela,
I lov' Carlotta, too.
I no can marry both o' dem,
So w'at I gona do?
O! Angela ees pretta girl,
She gotta hair so black, so curl,
An' teeth so white as anytheeng.
An' O! she gotta voice to seeng,
Dat mak' your hearta feel eet must
Jump up an' dance or eet weell bust.
An' alla time she seeng, her eyes
Dey smila like Italia's skies,
An' makin' flirtin' looks at you—
But dat ees all w'at she can do.
Carlotta ees no gotta song,
A MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine’s heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.
Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.
Why are thou sad, my Beppo? But last eve,
Here at my feet, thy dear head on my breast,
I heard thee say thy heart would no more grieve
Or feel the olden ennui and unrest.
What troubles thee? Am I not all thine own –
I, so long sought, so sighed for and so dear?
And do I not live but for thee alone?
“Thou hast seen Lippo, whom I loved last year! ”
Well, what of that? Last year is naught to me –
‘Tis swallowed in the ocean of the past.
Art thou not glad ‘twas Lippo, and not thee,
