Play that you are mother dear,
And play that papa is your beau;
Play that we sit in the corner here,
Just as we used to, long ago.
Playing so, we lovers two
Are just as happy as we can be,
And I'll say "I love you" to you,
And you say "I love you" to me!
"I love you" we both shall say,
All in earnest and all in play.

Or, play that you are that other one
That some time came, and went away;
And play that the light of years agone
Stole into my heart again to-day!
Playing that you are the one I knew

Since we through war awhile must part
Sweetheart, and learn to lose
Daily use
Of all that satisfied our heart:
Lay up those secrets and those powers
Wherewith you pleased and cherished me these two years:

Now we must draw, as plants would,
On tubers stored in a better season,
Our honey and heaven;
Only our love can store such food.
Is this to make a god of absence?
A new-born monster to steal our sustenance?

We cannot quite cast out lack and pain.
Let him remain-what he may devour
We can well spare:

O little hands, long vanished in the night--
Sweet fairy hands that were my treasure here--
My heart is full of music from some sphere,
Where ye make melody for God's delight.
Though autumn clouds obscure the starry height,
And winds are noisy and the land is drear,
In this blank room I feel my lost love near,
And hear you playing--hands so small and white.
The shadowy organ sings its songs again,
The dead years turn to music at its voice,
And all the dreams come back my brain did store.

Most wounds can Time repair;
But some are mortal -- these:
For a broken heart there is no balm,
No cure for a heart at ease --

At ease, but cold as stone,
Though the intellect spin on,
And the feat and practiced face may show
Nought of the life that is gone;

But smiles, as by habit taught;
And sighs, as by custom led;
And the soul within is safe from damnation,
Since it is dead.

At Dawn and Dusk
Love-Laurel
IN MEMORY OF HENRY KENDALL

AH! that God once would touch my lips with song
To pierce, as prayer doth heaven, earth’s breast of iron,
So that with sweet mouth I might sing to thee,
O sweet dead singer buried by the sea,
A song, to woo thee, as a wooing siren,
Out of that silent sleep which seals too long
Thy mouth of melody.
For, if live lips might speak awhile to dead,
Or any speech could reach the sad world under
This world of ours, song surely should awake

In the night I dreamed of you;
All the place was filled
With your presence; in my heart
The strife was stilled.

All night I have dreamed of you;
Now the morn is grey.--
How shall I arise and face
The empty day?

Her maiden dreams were redolent of love,
Warm-bosomed as she breathed the passionate air
Of old romance, and did in fancy move
'Mong the gay knights who died for ladies fair;
Until she heard the thunder of the press,
And so became a lover; her heart rang
The note of love's alarm, his tenderness,
When in the onset all the tourney sang.
And she was one of the dead ladies who,
In beauty's blazon, to his misty bower
With Launcelot, when the Queen was gone, withdrew
Under the shadow of the tourney tower;

Not the proudest damsel here
Looks so well as doth my dear.
All the borrowed light of dress
Outshining not her loveliness,

A loveliness not born of art,
But growing outwards from her heart,
Illuminating all her face,
And filling all her form with grace.

Said I, of dress the borrowed light
Could rival not her beauty bright?
Yet, looking round, `tis truth to tell,
No damsel here is dressed so well.

Only in them the dress one sees,
Because more greatly it doth please
Than any other charm that's theirs,

Because I breathe not love to every one,
Nor do not use set colours for to wear,
Nor nourish special locks of vowed hair,
Nor give each speech a full point of a groan,
The courtly nymphs, acquainted with the moan
Of them who in their lips Love's standard bear,
"What, he!" say they of me, "now I dare swear
He cannot love. No, no, let him alone."—
And think so still, so Stella know my mind!
Profess indeed I do not Cupid's art;
But you, fair maids, at length this true shall find,
That his right badge is worn but in the heart.

I might!--unhappy word--O me, I might,
And then would not, or could not, see my bliss;
Till now wrapt in a most infernal night,
I find how heav'nly day, wretch! I did miss.
Heart, rend thyself, thou dost thyself but right;
No lovely Paris made thy Helen his,
No force, no fraud robb'd thee of thy delight,
Nor Fortune of thy fortune author is;
But to myself myself did give the blow,
While too much wit, forsooth, so troubled me
That I respects for both our sakes must show: