I'le doe my best to win, when'ere I wooe:
That man loves not, who is not zealous too.

Seene? and yet hated thee? they did not see,
They saw Thee not, that saw and hated thee:
No, no, they saw thee not, o Life, o Love,
Who saw ought in thee, that their hate could move.

Another year of joy & grief,
Another year of hope & fear:
O Mother, is life long or brief?
We hasten while we linger here.

But since we linger, love me still
And bless me still, O Mother mine,
While hand in hand we scale life's hill,
You Guide, & I your Valentine.

I am that Adam who, with Snake for guest,
Hid anguished eyes upon Eve's piteous breast.
I am that Adam who, with broken wings,
Fled from the Seraph's brazen trumpetings.
Betrayed and fugitive, I still must roam
A world where sin, and beauty, whisper of Home.

Oh, from wide circuit, shall at length I see
Pure daybreak lighten again on Eden's tree?
Loosed from remorse and hope and love's distress,
Enrobe me again in my lost nakedness?
No more with wordless grief a loved one grieve,
But to Heaven's nothingness re-welcome Eve?

A moon impoverished amid stars curtailed,
A sun of its exuberant lustre shorn,
A transient morning that is scarcely morn,
A lingering night in double dimness veiled.—
Our hands are slackened and our strength has failed:
We born to darkness, wherefore were we born?
No ripening more for olive, grape, or corn:
Faith faints, hope faints, even love himself has paled.
Nay! love lifts up a face like any rose
Flushing and sweet above a thorny stem,
Softly protesting that the way he knows;
And as for faith and hope, will carry them

I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedias
And slid my fingers among topics and titles
Looking for you.

And the answer comes slow.
There seems to be no answer.

I shall ask the next banana peddler the who and the why of it.

Or—the iceman with his iron tongs gripping a clear cube in summer sunlight—maybe he will know.

Lett fickle Fortune runn her blyndest race,
I setled have an unremovèd mynde;
I scorne to be the game of Phancie's chase,
Or fane to shewe the change of every winde.
Light giddy humours, stinted to no rest,
Still change their choyse, yet never choose the best.

My choise was guided by foresightfull heede,
It was averrèd with approvinge will;
It shall be followed with performinge deede,
And seald with vow, till death the chooser kill.
Yea death, though finall date of vayne desires,
Endes not my choise, which with no tyme expires.

I prest my Julia's lips, and in the kisse
Her Soule and Love were palpable in this.

Love's of it self, too sweet; the best of all
Is, when loves hony has a dash of gall.

I said: This is a beautiful fresh rose.
I said: I will delight me with its scent;
Will watch its lovely curve of languishment,
Will watch its leaves unclose, its heart unclose.
I said: Old earth has put away her snows,
All living things make merry to their bent,
A flower is come for every flower that went
In autumn, the sun glows, the south wind blows.
So walking in a garden of delight
I came upon one sheltered shadowed nook
Where broad leaf shadows veiled the day with night,
And there lay snow unmelted by the sun:—