English

Quiet woods bend o'er me,
Tender ferns and sweet
Cluster low before me,
Kiss my feet.

Autumn berries glisten
In the hedges dry:
Brown birds as I listen
Rustle by.

Brown eyes shine beside me;
Twenty years ago
Love vouchsafed to guide me
By their glow.

Cousin! how we wandered
Through these autumn ways,
Smiled and laughed and pondered
In old days:

Threaded all these alleys,
Gathered berries red
In the green still valleys
Where we tread.

Not through the poet's heart one rapture flows
When love, that rules him to the end, is won.
He wins the raptures of the past, — he knows
The joy of deeds in old-world eras done.

Nor only in fancy, — for each brain contains,
Writ small but clear, the history of the race,
A thousand pleasures and a thousand pains: —
Thought conquers time, and passion baffles space.

The magic touch of woman's hand restores
With thrilling present half miraculous power
The sense of all the past — its sunlit shores,

Somewhere i' the world to-day
Thou breathest, — and yon spray
Of honeysuckle is sweeter
Since thou hast passed that way.

Thou wakest at the morn
And I am less forlorn, —
And summer airs are fleeter,
Thy voice along them borne.

Thou sleepest in the night
And all my heart is light,
Bending above thee dreaming
Soft dreams, with face grown bright.

Thou art alive! yon rose
The sweet sweet secret knows;

Not to a queen or king
Is the deep inmost spirit in me loyal,
But to the waves that sing
Round English shores, and fling
Against our fortressed rocks their mantles royal.


A crowned head in my sight
Hath little import: flower-crowned hills have more;
Our cliffs and surges white,
Or blue waves soft and bright
That ripple gently on a sunlit shore.


No prince or ruler holds
The free land of my heart: it dwells amid
The heather-purpled wolds
And in the green woods' folds,—

Lo! the first kiss of Eve when the first night
Fell over Paradise,—the blue profound
Far heaven of darkness slowly closing round
And silent star-ships steering into sight.
The world is shadowed, but Eve's eyes are bright
And sunshine in her golden locks is bound:—
First they had feared the unheard-of dark,—but found
The passionate darkness sweeter than the light.

Yes: the first kiss. And since that far-off hour
Lips tender and innumerable have met;
And lips shall meet sweeter, than any yet;

How soon thou know'st not, — yet it may be soon. —
This high reward of holy expectation
God sends; it outweighs years of tribulation, —
It is a glorious and sufficient boon.
A sudden splendour round me like a moon
Grandly uprising from some silent sea
May flame, — transfiguring unexpectedly:
Hurling my soul towards heaven in one swift swoon.

O lady, when thy kiss comes, be it through pain

When I receive thee bleeding
From all the thorn-crowns of the weary years,


God having heard our pleading
At last with merciful and tender ears,


Shall I not find thee fairer
For all the horror of the lonely way, —
Thee, doomed to be a sharer
In my life's skies so bitter, gaunt, and grey?


Will not thy lips be sweeter
Than rosebud trifling lips of untrained child,
And thine embrace completer
For all the past nights when pain's winds were wild?


And shall not I be nearer

What are the unions of the present? — poor
And pallid, mere forlorn sick shades of love.
When Beatrice kissed Dante from above
Then first their joy shone, glorious to endure.
The love that death can shorten or obscure
Is not love, — love alone which hath no ending,
For ever towards God's throne on sweet wings tending,
Is love that touching, touches to secure.

The lips of love may touch, the breasts may meet,
And yet there shall be separation after;
God's scorn and all heaven's high tempestuous laughter

I.

Of joy, of summer days, of sweetness,
Of leaf-perfection, flower-completeness,
There comes an utter end:
All songs, all days of calm or laughter,
Are followed by a blank hereafter
Towards which their footsteps tend.

II.

Of pleasure, happiness, soft weeping,
Of eager action, weary sleeping,
There comes alike the close:
To soft slim flower by roadside hilly,
To great majestic garden lily,
To red majestic rose.

III.

I.

Once shines the sweet dawn o'er the ocean spaces,
Once flames the sunlight on the laughing shore, —
Once life is gladdened by true friendly faces,
Once: then no more.

II.

Once love with tender beauty through life's valleys
Passes, once lays soft hand upon life's door;
Once from the green ravine white Venus sallies;
Once: then no more.

III.

Once fame twines bays, or love her sweeter fairer