Love comes divinely, gladdening mortal life,
As sunrise dawns upon the gaze of one
Bewildered in some outland waste, and lost:
Who, lonely faint and shuddering, through the night
Heard savage creatures nigh; and far-off moan
Of tempests on the wind.

Auroral joy
Flushes the brow of childhood, warms his cheek
To rosier redness at the name of Love;
And earlier thoughts awake in darkness strive;
As unfledged nestlings move their sightless heads
At sound, toward a fair world to them unknown.
Young Hope scales azure mountain heights to gaze,

(To E.W.)


Home, O most pale adventurer, are you bound
From that strange kingdom where no love may trace
The life it loves to its abiding place,
Or hail it from afar with cheerful sound.
From deeps whose marges mortal ne'er hath found
You steal, and we are awed before your face--
For you are weird with wonder, with the grace
Of death's most delicate lilies are you crowned.

After the ranging sunset of Farewell--
When life's loved country fades, and hope is lorn,

Cometh the Wind from the garden, fragrant and full of sweet singing--
Under my tree where I sit cometh the Wind to confession.

"Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses--
Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing;
Told I my love in those songs, and answer she gave in her blushes--
She shall be bride of the Wind, and she is the Queen of the Roses!"

"Wind, there is spice in thy breath; thy rapture hath fragrance Sabaean!"

"Straight from my wooing I come--my lips are bedewed with her kisses--

If to see thee be to love thee,
If to love thee be to prize
Naught of earth or heaven above thee,
Nor to live but for those eyes:
If such love to mortal given,
Be wrong to earth, be wrong to heaven,
'Tis not for thee the fault to blame,
For from those eyes the madness came.
Forgive but thou the crime of loving
In this heart more pride 'twill raise
To be thus wrong with thee approving,
Than right with all a world to praise!

* * * * *

But say, while light these songs resound,

"But bending low, I whisper only this:
'Love, it is night.'"
--HARRY THURSTON PECK.


Love, it is night. The orb of day
Has gone to hit the cosmic hay.
Nocturnal voices now we hear.
Come, heart's delight, the hour is near
When Passion's mandate we obey.

I would not, sweet, the fact convey
In any crude and obvious way:
I merely whisper in your ear--
"Love, it is night!"

Candor compels me, pet, to say
That years my fading charms betray.
Tho' Love be blind, I grant it's clear

Air-"Come live with me and be my love."


Come wed with me and we will write,
My Blue of Blues, from morn till night.
Chased from our classic souls shall be
All thoughts of vulgar progeny;
And thou shalt walk through smiling rows
Of chubby duodecimos,
While I, to match thy products nearly,
Shall lie-in of a quarto yearly.
'Tis true, even books entail some trouble;
But live productions give one double.

Correcting children is such bother,--
While printers' devils correct the other.
Just think, my own Malthusian dear,

Florence.


No--'tis not the region where Love's to be found--
They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
When she warbled her best--but they've nothing like Love.

Nor is't that pure sentiment only they want,
Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made--
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;

That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,

Come, play me that simple air again,
I used so to love, in life's young day,
And bring, if thou canst, the dreams that then
Were wakened by that sweet lay
The tender gloom its strain
Shed o'er the heart and brow
Grief's shadow without its pain--
Say where, where is it now?
But play me the well-known air once more,
For thoughts of youth still haunt its strain
Like dreams of some far, fairy shore
We never shall see again.

Sweet air, how every note brings back
Some sunny hope, some daydream bright,

Love had a fever--ne'er could close
His little eyes till day was breaking;
And wild and strange enough, Heaven knows,
The things he raved about while waking.

To let him pine so were a sin;--
One to whom all the world's a debtor--
So Doctor Hymen was called in,
And Love that night slept rather better.

Next day the case gave further hope yet,
Tho' still some ugly fever latent;--
"Dose, as before"--a gentle opiate.
For which old Hymen has a patent.

After a month of daily call,
So fast the dose went on restoring,

pauca nunciate meae puellae.


Comrades and friends! with whom, where'er
The fates have willed thro' life I've roved,
Now speed ye home, and with you bear
These bitter words to her I've loved.

Tell her from fool to fool to run,
Where'er her vain caprice may call;
Of all her dupes not loving one,
But ruining and maddening all.

Bid her forget--what now is past--
Our once dear love, whose rain lies
Like a fair flower, the meadow's last.
Which feels the ploughshare's edge and dies!