I remember the rain in her hair,
And the delicate turn of her wrist,
As she lifted her hand to her hair,
Wind-blown, and the sound of the sea;
And the sun looming large in the mist,
And the wine of the downland air,
Giving strength, and the battle and twist
Of grey gulls over the sea.

Side by side in the crowded streets,
Amid its ebb and flow,
We walked together one autumn morn;
('Twas many years ago!)

The markets blushed with fruits and flowers;
(Both Memory and Hope!)
You stopped and bought me at the stall,
A spicy cantelope.

We drained together its honeyed wine,
We cast the seeds away;
I slipped and fell on the moony rinds,
And you took me home on a dray!

The honeyed wine of your love is drained;
I limp from the fall I had;
The snow-flakes muffle the empty stall,
And everything is sad.

As the ant brought to Solomon the King
The thigh of a grass-hopper as an offering,
So do I bring my soul, beloved, to thee.

I have placed my head and my heart
On the sill of the door of my love.
Step gently, child!

Great God, attend while Zion sings
The joy that from Thy presence springs;
To spend one day with Thee on earth
Exceeds a thousand days of mirth.

I sat a little while beside
A greystoned rock—the rugged brow
Of our clear pool, where waters glide
By leaning tree and hanging bough—
In fall, when open air was cool,
And skimming swallows left the pool,
And glades in long-cast shadows lay
Below the yet clear day.

The leaves, that through the spring were gay,
Were now by hasty winds that shook
Them, wither'd, off their quiv'ring spray
All borne away along the brook,
Without a day of rest around
Their mother tree, on quiet ground;
But cast away, on blast and wave,

Oye who see with other eyes than ours,
And speak with tongues we are too deaf to hear,
Whose touch we cannot feel yet know ye near,
When, with a sense of yet undreamed-of powers,
We sudden pierce the cloud of sense that lowers,
Enwrapping us as 't were our spirit's tomb,
And catch some sudden glory through the gloom,
As Arctic sufferers dream of sun and flowers!
DOye not sometimes long for power to speak
To our dull ears, and pierce their shroud of clay
With a loud cry, “Why, then, this grief at ‘death’?
We are the living, you the dead to-day!

There's a sad loneliness about my heart,—
A deep, deep solitude the spirit feels
Amid this multitude. The things of art
Pall on the senses—from its pageantry,
Loathing, my eye turns off; and my ear shrinks
From the harsh dissonance that fills the air.

My soul is growing sick—I will away
And gather balm from a sweet forest walk!
There, as the breezes through the branches sweep,
Is heard aerial minstrelsy, like harps
Untouched, unseen, that on the spirit's ear
Pour out their numbers till they lull to peace
The tumult of the bosom. There's a voice

Lotus-laden,
pushing through,
a single windblown leaf

tells the news: it's fall again,
time to fish
and sport.

The moon-hare runs, the sun-crow flies,
human chatter stills.

Pink tinted sleeves fill up the brook
and poling songs

“IF I die first,” my old chum paused to say,
“Mind! not a whimper of regret:—instead,
Laugh and be glad, as I shall.—Being dead,
I shall not lodge so very far away
But that our mirth shall mingle.—So, the day
The word comes, joy with me.” “I'll try,” I said,
Though, even speaking, sighed and shook my head
And turned, with misted eyes. His roundelay
Rang gaily on the stair; and then the door
Opened and—closed. . . . Yet something of the clear,
Hale hope, and force of wholesome faith he had
Abided with me—strengthened more and more.—

Their little room grew light with cries;
He woke and heard them thread the dark,
He woke and felt them like the rays
Of some unlawful dawn at work:

Some random sunrise, lost and small,
That found the room's heart, vein by vein.
But she was whispering to the wall,
And he must see what she had seen.

He asked her gently, and she wept.
“Oh, I have dreamed the ancient dream.
My time was on me, and I slept;
And I grew greater than I am;

“And lay like dead; but when I lived,
Three wingéd midwives wrapped the child.