Through years on years a man dreamed dreams on dreams
Of love. — The flowers of every spring were fair,
And love-thoughts glistened through the summer air
And mingled with the lilies on the streams
And wove gold circlets from the starry beams: —
Slow step by step Love's marble palace-stair
The man climbed, and it rang with laughter rare,
And sweet eyes met his own with answering gleams.

At last he reached the central palace-room,
And lo! a woman's form he there descried.
She rose to meet him. In that fragrant gloom,

No friend shall follow and face the burning glare
Of thought, in those fierce realms towards which I lead:
No lesser love shall triumph, or succeed
In breathing that divine sun-stricken air.
Yet well and tenderly my sweet shall fare; —
She shall not thirst, — her white foot shall not bleed, —
She shall not pant for brook or flowery mead:
Love is enough, — and Love's fount shall be there.

Love's silver waters tender and divine
Shall spring around us at this staff of mine, —
The stroke of this my living staff of song:

A tuft of mignonette, a withered rose!
Numberless foolish hearts have treasured such.
Now, as I lift them from their long repose,
They turn to dust and crumble at a touch —
Poor flowers that meant so much!

They meant — pure love and limitless belief
In summer's faithfulness, in sunny skies:
They mean — one lonely pang of silent grief,
Just one true tear that in a moment dries,
For even sorrow dies.

So with the millions who have hoarded flowers:
The frail love-token lasts, the heart's love goes.
Man's vaunted strength and woman's boasted powers

The true possession is the holy sense
Of love and of ecstatic victory.
Such true possession, love, was given to me:—
A glory of triumph tenderly intense.
A passion without envy or offence
Was mine,—and that clear passion's blest reward
Was the achievement of a golden sword
That severed all the barriers dark and dense.

One night when thou wast reading of my love,
My yearning drew thee,—and thy spirit came,
Like a white-winged and golden-crested dove,
With plumage touched by passion as by flame:

But surely, far beyond the eternal hills
And the slow river that pale men revere
More than earth's quiet violet-girdled rills,
Shall love and all things doubtful be made clear.
Earth's autumn, red and solemn and austere,
Shall blossom into green May-scented spring,
And the opening of a green eternal year
Arouse the happy praise of everything; —
Then shall the hills and heaven's copses ring
With notes of throstles that were broken-hearted,
And whistle of nightingales too weak to sing
When love and all love's music had departed;

LINES Written ON AGAIN R EADING AN OLD R OMANCE

O I SOLINA , loved in boyish fashion,
Loved when the heart was nobly pure and free,
Again I read thy tale of love and passion,
Again forget the world and gaze on thee.

Romance beyond romance is in thy story:
I read the wild tale thirty years ago —
Yet still I see the sunlight's ceaseless glory
Poured over plains and hills of Mexico.

Hold thou thy loved one through the summer night;
Soon 'twill be light;
The armies of the stars will own defeat:
The sun will frighten love from out the skies,
With flaming eyes:
But yet the night was sweet!

The velvet lips that rested once on thine,
With touch divine,
Turn elsewhere. Will love pause, though tears entreat?
Through all time, never! — Yet in days gone by
(Yes, one swift sigh!)
Those lips to thee were sweet.

One hour of rapture, and the sun's warm breath;
Then sunless death;
Death for the poppies and the golden wheat:

What is the whisper of the leaves
Round ruined turrets reddening fast,
Or nestling under cottage-eaves
While autumn winds go sighing past?
“Life is sorrow,” they whisper,
“Life is only a dream:
The sky seemed blue, but it was not true;
The sky is as grey as the stream!”

What is the whisper of the heart
When love and life have ceased to please,
When passion's fairy dreams depart
And cold winds rustle through the trees?
“Life is trouble,” it whispers,
“Trouble and wild despair

The bloom is fair upon the hawthorn hedges;
The throstles sing from many a budding spray;
Blue ripples laugh along the river-edges;
The blue sky seems to whisper, " It is May! "
And yet the thought of tawny-leaved September
Dismays the fancy with a touch of gloom:
Aye, and a mem'ry of old wild November,
Whose storm-winds trumpet forth pale Autumn's doom.

When love is at its sweetest, in its season,
When it is full of summer joy and mirth,
There sometimes comes the thought, " In love is treason:
Not always Summer sways the green-robed earth. "

How few there are on whom their City fair
And sweet as Athens in the old days shines!
London I loved, — her houses smoke-veiled lines,
Her towers, her sunless stream, her fog-damp air,
The tiger-lily in a London square
To me meant all things. What the soul divines
Of mystery, thrilling through a thousand signs,
This is our own, — this, fearless, we declare.

London I loved, — each Park, and every tree
In each, the red-billed swans, the sparrows gay,
The teeming busy life of every day.
Not the blue wavelets of a summer ocean