From the brake the Nightingale
Sings exulting to the Rose;
Though he sees her waxing pale
In her passionate repose,
While she triumphs waxing frail,
Fading even while she glows;
Though he knows
How it goes —
Knows of last year's Nightingale
Dead with last year's Rose.

Wise the enamoured Nightingale,
Wise the well-beloved Rose!
Love and life shall still prevail,
Nor the silence at the close
Break the magic of the tale
In the telling, though it shows —
Who but knows
How it goes! —

K ATE-A -W HIMSIES , John-a-Dreams,
Still debating, still delay,
And the world 's a ghost that gleams —
Wavers — vanishes away!

We must live while live we can;
We should love while love we may.
Dread in women, doubt in man ...
So the Infinite runs away.

O, GATHER me the rose, the rose,
While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
And winter waits behind it!

For with the dream foregone, foregone,
The deed forborne for ever,
The worm, regret, will canker on,
And Time will turn him never.

So well it were to love, my love,
And cheat of any laughter
The fate beneath us and above,
The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
The sunshine and the swallow,
The dream that comes, the wish that goes,
The memories that follow!

First printed in Blackwood's Magazine , October, 1846.

I

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled and a heart well tried —
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They " give her time;" for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

II

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,

Here sleeps THE Queen; this is the royall bed.
O'th' Damask Rose, sprung from the white and red,
Whose sweet perfume fills the all-filling aire,
This Rose is withered, once so lovely faire,
On neither tree did grow such Rose before,
The greater was our gain, our losse the more.

1

Unto her, his well-beloved, —
Maitreyi his pious wife, —
Spake the saintly Yajna-valkya,
When he took to forest life.
" Worldly wealth and every object
Now I leave behind, my fair,
Katyayani takes her portion,
Thou, Maitreyi, take thy share. "

2

" Worldly wealth and precious objects, "
Asked the pious-hearted wife,
" Will they lead to my salvation,

28

If it be shame to love a pretty woman,
  Then shameful loving is a pretty thing.
And of all things the most divinely human
  Is this:—Love purifies life's Fountain Spring;
And he who has not quaffed that fount is no man—
  I'd rather be a lover than a king.
And then, preach as we will or may, we'll find
That Cupid, dear young god, is sometimes blind.

I loved her; and you say she loved me not.
Well, if I loved her? And if she forgot,
Well, I have not forgotten even yet:
Time, and spent tears, may teach me to forget.
And so she loves another, and did then
When she was heaven and earth to me, and when,
Truly, she made me happy. It may be:
I only know how good she was to me.
Friend, to have loved, to have been made happy thus,
What better fate has life in store for us,
The dream of life from which we have to wake,
Happier, why not? why not for a dream's sake?

I know your lips are bought like any fruit;
I know your love, and of your love the root;
I know your kisses toll for love that dies
In kissing, to be buried in your eyes;
I know I am degraded for your sake,
And that my shame will not so much as make
Your glory, or be reckoned in the debt
Of memories you are mindful to forget.
All this I know, and, knowing it, I come
Delighted to my daily martyrdom;
And, rich in love beyond the common store,
Become for you a beggar, to implore
The broken crumbs that from your table fall,

O woman! I am jealous of the eyes
That look upon you; all my looks are spies
That do but lurk and follow you about,
Restless to find some guilty secret out.
I am unhappy if I see you not,
Unhappy if I see you; tell me what
That smile betokens? what close thing is hid
Beneath the half-way lifting of a lid?
Who is it, tell me, I so dread to meet,
Just as we turn the corner of the street?
Daily I search your baffling eyes to see
Who knows what new admitted company?
And, sick with dread to find the thing I seek,