Love in the solemn chilliness of April rain,
Among fresh greening leaves at dusk of evening;
Love in the call of air-washed rooks; love in this lane
Muddy beneath my feet; — here is not love most vain,
Though with strange summer thoughts some birds would ever sing?

Is my love any love? A flash of glorious eyes,
A wilder gleam of sea beyond the dusty ways,
Is this love love indeed? Ah, these gray shadowed skies
All the cold, all the rain, each fickle false sunrise
Cry to me timeless love knoweth nor years nor days.

Sweet eyes afire with light
Adream with tears:
On you will fall a night
On you fall fears:
Yet would I suffer gladly, if I might,
Your hidden years.

Will not you smile on me,
For so much love?
Ah, shall it ever be
That I may move
Your light of love to lighten even me
With all your love?

Passionate fragrance of hyacinth bloom
Through the still calm o' the night
Shot to the depth of the gathered gloom
A scent, a sound, a light;
[Ideally] with thought of an endless land
Hid in this triune power,
A beautiful scorn that the soul may understand,
The wordless oracle sweet in the breathing flower —
A passion of infinite glory, of vision pent
In the sight and touch of a flower,
Where lies the land of the light, the sound, the scent,
The land of one hour?
Or must the urge at the heart of a love-thrilled soul

To walk with him in the lane of May,
Were it not well?
To drink the glory of perfect day,
In a new, sweet way,
While our hearts should tell
The thing that we two should know so well!
But afar in this north of Wales
The wind chills and wails
While I shiver alone in a desolate air
And the eyes that I love are otherwhere.

As if tired out with kisses,
Content to be at rest,
Here, on my breast,
Her mouth, that ached with kisses,
Drooped to my shoulder, then she sighed
A little, smiled
Then, like a happy child,
She fell asleep upon my breast.

Love comes and goes, and this is
(Love, that I once possessed!)
Love, like the rest,
And goes the way of kisses.
Yet one hour lives, of all those hours that died,
When, like a child,
She turned to me, just smiled,
And fell asleep upon my breast.

Your hands cling softly, like a cat,
Whose loving little paws will pat
The loving hands caressing her;
And like the velvet warmth of fur
Your soft and glowing palms compress
Desire into their daintiness.
Hold me, enfold me, let me rain
Roses of kisses on my chain;
The throbbing of your finger-tips
Is rarer to me than your lips,
And your slow purple pulse that beats
Against my mouth in heavier heats,
Dearer, almost, than the unrest
Of your dear, hesitating breast,
That calls me, and denies me part
In the suspensions of your heart.

THE PRINCES AT THE GATE

Prince, you are late!
The princess watches for you at the gate:
Looks down the long dull road with eager eyes
And whispers softly, " Love, I wait ... I wait. "

Prince, is it wise
To be so long in coming? for youth flies,
And other men pass lightly on their way
And see a pretty princess there who sighs,

And one might say,
" I am the prince you watch for every day,
" Pale princess looking out with eyes like stars,
" I love you, little princess, let me stay. "

Behind her bars

WITH THE IMMORTALS

Life and Love went flying, flying,
Out of the world together.
Nothing cared they for pain or dying,
Nothing for stormy weather.
Up they flew
Towards the blue,
Earth and time defying.

Life and Love kept winging, winging,
Higher and ever higher.
Slowly their bright forms vanished, swinging

O LOVELY Griddle where my Cakes of Song
Are baked! O Gulf Stream of my ocean deep!
O Human Thermos Bottle! will you keep
My love as hot as this our whole lives long?
Or will the slow years moderate the strong
Caloric currents? ... gradual years that creep
To frost Love's tootsies where he lies asleep
Shall our fate be that of the common throng?

Well, you at least will live in memory;
And that, Suzanne, is more than I can say
Of my Wife Number Twenty-one, for she
Out of my mind has faded quite away.

Sun of my Heaven! Harvest Moon of love!
Bright Planet! Comet! ... whether earth or sky
I scan, your Pink Bean meets my spirit's eye,
O peer of flowers beneath and stars above!
O Aphrodite's Crimson-Crested Dove,
I love you as New Englanders love pie!
Vesuvius Girl! your fiery head fling high
And give yon leering Zenith's face a shove!

My Twelfth Wife used to go about with twisters
Of kid upon her hair to keep it curley ...
I pulled it all out by the roots ... Poor girlie!
Her baldness rather shocked her aunts and sisters ...