What will you give me for this heart of mine,
 No heart of gold—and yet my dearest treasure?
 It has its graces—it can ache and pine,
 And beat true time to your sweet voice’s measure;
 It bears your name, it lives but for your pleasure:
 What will you give me for this heart I bring,
 That holds my life, my joy, my everything?
How can I ask a price, when all my prayer
 Is that, without return, you will but take it—
 Feed it with hope, or starve it to despair,
 Keep it to play with, mock it, crush it, break it,
 And, if your will lies there, at last forsake it?
 Its epitaph shall voice its deathless pride:
 “She held me in her hands until I died.”

ENTREATY

O love, let us part now!
 Ours is the tremulous, low-spoken vow,
 Ours is the spell of meeting hands and eyes.
 The first, involuntary, sacred kiss
 Still on our lips in benediction lies.
 O Love, be wise!
 Love at its best is worth no more than this—
 Let us part now!
O Love, let us part now!
 Ere yet the roses wither on my brow,
 Ere yet the lilies wither in your breast,
 Ere the implacable hour shall flower to bear
 The seeds of deathless anguish and unrest.
 To part is best.
 Between us still the drawn sword flameth fair—
 Let us part now!

THE FOREST POOL

Lean down and see your little face
 Reflected in the forest pool,
 Tall foxgloves grow about the place,
 Forget-me-nots grow green and cool.
 Look deep and see the naiad rise
 To meet the sunshine of your eyes.
Lean down and see how you are fair,
 How gold your hair, your mouth how red;
 See the leaves dance about your hair
 The wind has left unfilleted.
 What naiad of them can compare
 With you for good and dear and fair?
Ah! look no more—the water stirs,
 The naiad weeps your face to see,
 Your beauty is more rare than hers,
 And you are more beloved than she.
 Fly! fly, before she steals the charms
 The pool has trusted to her arms.

DISCRETION

Ah, turn your pretty eyes away!
 You would not have me love again?
 Love’s pleasure does not live a day,
 Immortal is Love’s pain,
 And I am tired of pain.
I have loved once—aye, once or twice;
 The pleasure died, the pain lives here;
 I will not look in your sweet eyes,
 I will not love you, Dear,
 Lest you should grow too dear.
For I am weary and afraid.
 Have I not seen why life was fair,
 And known how good a world God made,
 How sweet the blossoms were,
 How dear the green fields were?
And I have found how life was gray,
 A mist-hung road, a quest in vain,
 Until once more Love smiled my way
 And fooled me once again,
 And taught me grief again.
Now I will gather no more grief;
 I only ask to see the sky,
 The budding flower, the budding leaf,
 And put old dreamings by,
 The dreams Love tortures by.
For, being wise, I love no more;
 You, if you will, snare with those eyes
 Some fool who never loved before,
 And teach him to be wise!
 For why should you be wise?

SPRING SONG

Here’s the Spring-time, Sweet!
 Earth’s green gown is new,
 Lambs begin to bleat,
 Doves begin to coo,
 Birds begin to woo
 In the wood and lane;
 Sweet, the tale is true
 Spring is here again!
I have been discreet
 All the winter through;
 Now, before your feet,
 Blossoms let me strew.
Flowers, as yet, are few;
 Will my lady deign
 Take this flower or two?
 Spring is here again
Make the year complete,
 Give the Spring her due!
 All the flowers entreat,
 All the song-birds sue.
 ’Twixt the green and blue
 Let Love wake and reign,
 Let me worship you—
 Spring is here again!

TOO LATE

When Love, sweet Love, was tangled in my snare
 I clipped his wings, and dressed his cage with flowers,
 Made him my little joy for little hours,
 And fed him when I had a song to spare.
 And then I saw how good life’s good things were,
 The kingdoms and the glories and the powers.
 Flowers grew in sheaves and stars were shed in showers,
 And, when the great things wearied, Love was there.
But when, within his cage, one winter day
 I found him lying still with folded wings,
 No longer fluttering, eager to be fed—
 Kingdoms and powers and glories passed away,
 And of life’s countless, precious, priceless things
 Nothing was left but Love—and Love was dead!

BY FAITH WITH THANKSGIVING

Love is no bird that nests and flies,
 No rose that buds and blooms and dies,
 No star that shines and disappears,
 No fire whose ashes strew the years:
 Love is the god who lights the star,
 Makes music of the lark’s desire,
 Love tells the rose what perfumes are,
 And lights and feeds the deathless fire.
Love is no joy that dies apace
 With the delight of dear embrace—
 Love is no feast of wine and bread,
 Red-vintaged and gold-harvested:
Love is the god whose touch divine
 On hands that clung and lips that kissed,
 Has turned life’s common bread and wine
 Into the Holy Eucharist.

THE APPEAL

All summer-time you said:
 “Love has no need of shelter nor of kindness,
 For all the flowers take pity on his blindness,
 And lead him to his scented rose-soft bed.”
“He is a king,” you said.
 “That I bow not the knee will never grieve him,
 For all the summer-palaces receive him.”
 But now Love has not where to lay his head.
“He is a god,” you said.
 “His altars are wherever roses blossom.”
 And summer made his altar of her bosom,
 But now the altar is ungarlanded.
Take back the words you said:
 Out in the rain he shivers broken-hearted;
 Summer who bore him has with tears departed,
 And o’er her grave he weeps uncomforted.
And you, for all you said,
 Would weep too, if when dawn stills the wind’s riot,
 You found him on your threshold, pale and quiet,
 Clasped him at last, and found the child was dead.

AUTUMN SONG

“Will you not walk the woods with me?
 The shafts of sunlight burn
 On many a golden-crested tree
 And many a russet fern.
 The Summer’s robe is dyed anew,
 And Autumn’s veil of mist
 Is gemmed with little pearls of dew
 Where first we met and kissed.”
“I will not walk the woodlands brown
 Where ghosts and mists are blown,
 But I will walk the lonely down
 And I will walk alone.
Where Night spreads out her mighty wing
 And dead days keep their tryst,
 There will I weep the woods of Spring
 Where first we met and kissed.”

THE LAST ACT

Never a ring or a lock of hair
 Or a letter stained with tears,
 No crown for the princely hour to wear,
 To be mocked of the rebel years.
 Not a spoken vow, not a written page
 And never a rose or a rhyme
 To tell to the wintry ear of age
 The tale of the summer time.
Never a tear or a farewell kiss
 When the time is come to part;
 For the kiss would burn and the tear would hiss
 On the smouldering fire in my heart.
But let me creep to the kindly clay,
 And nothing be left to tell
 How I played in your play a year and a day,
 And died when the curtain fell!

FAUTE DE MIEUX

When the corn is green and the poppies red
 And the fields are crimson with love-lies-bleeding,
 When the elms are black deep overhead
 And the shade lies cool where the calves are feeding,
 When the blackbird whistles the song of June,
 When kine knee-deep in the pond are drowsing,
 Leave pastoral peace—come up through the noon
 To the high chalk downs where the sheep are browsing.
Oh! sweet to dream in the noontide heat,
 On the scented bed of thyme and clover,
 With the air from the sea, blown keen and sweet,
 And the wings of the wide sky folded over,
 While, far in the blue, the skylark sings,
 Renounce desire and renounce endeavour,
 Forget life’s little unworthy things
 And dream that the dream will last for ever.
The love of your life, in your heart’s hid shrine,
 With its gifts and its torments, leave it sighing,
 And I will bury the pain of mine
 In the selfsame grave where its joy is lying.
 Let me hold your hand for a quiet hour
 In the wild thyme’s scent and the clear blue weather,
 Then come what may, we have plucked one flower,
 This hour on the downs alone together.

SONG OF LONG AGO

Long ago, long ago,
 When the hawthorn buds were pearly
 And the birds sang, late and early,
 All the songs that lovers know,
 How we lingered in the lane,
 Kissed and parted, kissed again,
 Parted, laggard foot and slow!
 What a pretty world we knew
 Dressed in moonlight, dreams and dew,
 Long ago, my first sweet sweetheart,
 Long ago!
Long ago, long ago,
 When the wind was on the river
 Where the lights and shadows shiver,
 And the streets were all aglow.
 In the gaudy gas-lit street
 We two parted, sweet, my sweet,
 And the crowd went to and fro,
 And your veil was wet with tears
 For the inevitable years—
 Long ago, my last sweet sweetheart,
 Long ago!

IN ECLIPSE

Pale veil of mist bound round the trees
 Pale fringe of rain upon the hills,
 Cold earth, cold sky and biting breeze
 That mock the withered daffodils.
 And yet so short a while ago,
 The sunlight on the quickened land
 Laughed at the memory of the snow,
 And we went hand in hand.
Pale veil of doubt wound round my heart,
 Pale fringe of tears upon your eyes;
 Why did we choose the evil part?
 Why did we leave our Paradise?
There were such green and pleasant ways
 Where you and I with happy heart
 Laughed at the old unhappy days,
 And now—we are apart.
Will the sun shine again some day?
 Will you forgive me and forget?
 Chill is the east, the west is gray,
 And all our world with tears is wet.
 Ah! love, the world is wide and cold,
 The weary skies are wild with rain;
 Give me at least your hand to hold
 Till the sun shines again.

SPECIAL PLEADING

The world’s a path all fresh and sweet,
 A sky all fresh and fair,
 With daisies underneath your feet
 And roses for your hair;
 Red roses for your pretty hair,
 Green trees to shade your way,
 And lavish blossoms everywhere,
 Because the time is May.
How gold the sun shines through the green!
 How soft the turf is spread!
 How richly falls the shimmering sheen
 About your darling head!
How in the dawn of Paradise
 Should you foresee the night?
 How, with the sunlight in your eyes,
 See aught beyond the light?
** * * *
The world’s a path all rough and wild,
 A sky all black with fears,
 Among the ghosts, unhappy child,
 You stumble, blind with tears;
 The track is faint, and far the fold,
 And very far the day:
 Unless you have a hand to hold,
 How will you find the way?

“LOVE WELL THE HOUR”

Heart of my heart, my life and light,
 If you were lost what should I do?
 I dare not let you from my sight,
 Lest Death should fall in love with you.
Such countless terrors lie in wait.
 The gods know well how dear you are:
 What if they left me desolate
 And plucked and set you for their star?
So hold my hand—the gods are strong,
 And perfect joy so rare a flower
 No man may hope to keep it long,
 And I might lose it any hour.
So, kiss me close, my star, my flower,
 Thus shall the future spare me this:
 The thought that there was ever an hour
 We might have kissed and did not kiss.

BETRAYED

I went back to our home to-day
 That still its robe of roses wore;
 My feet took the old easy way,
 And led me to our door.
And you are gone and never more
 Those little feet of yours will come
 To meet me at the open door,
 The threshold of our home.
The door unlatched did not protest:
 I entered, and the silence drew
 My steps towards the little nest
 That once I shared with you.
There lay your fan, your open book,
 Your seam half-sewn, and I could see
 The window whence you used to look—
 Yes, once you looked—for me.
Print of your little head caressed
 Our pillow still, and on the floor
 Still lay, dropped there when last you dressed,
 The scarf and rose you wore.
All should have spoken of you plain,
 Yet, when I bade the silence tell
 Of you, my bidding was in vain,
 I could not break its spell.
The silence would not speak, my dear,
 Till the last level light grew dim;
 Then, in the twilight I could hear;
 The silence spoke—of him.

THE HEART OF SADNESS

It is not, Dear, because I am alone,
 I am lonelier when the rest are near,
 But that my place against your heart has grown
 Too dear to dream of when you are not here.
I weep because my thoughts no more may roam
 To meet, half-way, your longing thoughts of me,
 To turn with these and spread glad wings for home,
 For the dear haven where I fain would be.
When first we loved, I loved to steal away
 To show to solitude what love could do,
 To fill the waste space of the night and day
 With thousand-wingèd dreams that flew to you;
But now through many tears I am grown wise
 To know how mighty and how dear love is;
 I dare not turn to him my longing eyes,
 Nor even in dreams lean out my face to his,
Because, if once I let my caged heart go
 Through dreams to seek you, I should follow too
 Through wrong and right, through wisdom and through woe,
 Through heaven and hell, until I won to you!

THE HEART OF JOY

Dear, do you sigh that your love may not stay with you,
 Laugh with and play with you,
 Weep with and pray with you,
 All his life through?
 Think, O my heart, if you never had found me,
 Crept through the cere-clothes the world has wound round me,
 What would you do?
Wide is the world, and so many would sigh for you,
 Long for and cry for you,
 Weep for and die for you,
 You being you.
I only I, am the man you could sigh for,
 Live for and suffer for, sorrow and die for,
 Twenty lives through.
Think! Had I missed you! The world was so wide for us,
 Traps on each side for us,
 Nothing as guide for us,
 Yet I and you
 Found Life’s great treasure, the last and the first, love;
 Life’s little things, Time and Space, do their worst, love!
 What, after all, can they do?

THE HEART OF GRIEF

You will not come again
 Along the deep-banked lane
 To where the field and fold so long have missed you;
 You know no more the way
 To where, so many a day
 Before the world grew gray,
 Your lover kissed you.
The wonders and delights
 Of London days and nights
 Hold fast a soul not made for pastoral pleasures;
 The scent of mignonette
 Brings to you no regret,
 No withered flowers lie yet
 Among your treasures.
And I, who long for you
 Sad and glad seasons through,
 Find my grief’s heart in knowing grief will find you;
 Some day you too will sigh,
 And lay a dead flower by,
 And weep to see joy lie
 At last behind you.
What though the flower you hide
 With London wire be tied?
 What though the heart that broke your heart be rotten?
 You too at last must miss
 The smile, the word, the kiss,
 And know how hard it is
 To be forgotten.

REQUIEM

Now veiled in the inviolable past
 Love lies asleep, who never more will wake;
 Nor would you wake him, even for my sake
 Who for your sake pray he sleep sound at last.
What good thing had we of him—we who bore
 So long his yoke? what pleasant thing had we
 That we should weep his deathlong sleep to see,
 Or call on Life to waken him once more?
A little joy he gave, and much of pain,
 A little pleasure, and enduring grief,
 One flower of joy, and pain piled sheaf on sheaf,
 Harvests of loss, for every bud of gain.
Yet where he lies in this deserted place
 Divided by his narrow grave we sit,
 Welded together by the depths of it,
 Watching the years pass, with averted face.
We do not mourn for him, for here is peace;
 The old unrest frets not these empty years;
 With him went smiles a few, and many tears,
 And peace is sweeter far than those or these.
Only—we owe him nothing. If he gave,
 We too gave gifts—his gifts were less than ours:
 We gave the world, that held so many flowers
 For this—the world that only holds his grave.

TEINT NEUTRE

Wide downs all gray, with gray of clouds roofed over,
 Chill fields stripped naked of their gown of grain,
 Small fields of rain-wet grass and close-grown clover,
 Wet, wind-blown trees—and, over all, the rain.
Does memory lie? For Hope her missal closes
 So far away the may and roses seem;
 Ah! was there ever a garden red with roses?
 Ah! were you ever mine save in a dream?
So long it is since Spring, the skylark waking
 Heard her own praises in his perfect strain;
 Low hang the clouds, the sad year’s heart is breaking,
 And mine, my heart—and, over all, the rain.

OUT OF HOPE

If through the rain and wind along the street,
 Where the wet stone reflects the flickering gas,
 Some weeping autumn night your wandering feet,
 Lost in a lonely world, should chance to pass;
 If, passing many doors that welcomed you
 When robes of good renown your dear name wore,
 Your feet again, as once they used to do,
 Paused at my door,—
Should I shut fast my heart for the old ill,
 The old wrong done, the sorrow and the sin?
 Or—only knowing that I love you still—
 Should I throw wide the door and let you in?
Come—with your sins—my tears shall wash them all,
 The heart you broke still waits to be your home.
 Yet if you came.... Oh! lost beyond recall
 You never more will come.

HAUNTED

The house is haunted; when the little feet
 Go pattering about it in their play,
 I tremble lest the little one should meet
 The ghosts that haunt the happy night and day.
And yet I think they only come to me;
 They come through night of ease and pleasant day
 To whisper of the torment that must be
 If I some day should be, alas! as they.
And when the child is lying warm asleep,
 The ghosts draw back the curtain of my bed,
 And past them through the dreadful dark I creep,
 Clasp close the child, and so am comforted.
Cling close, cling close, my darling, my delight,
 Sad voices on the wind come thin and wild,
 Ghosts of poor mothers crying in the night—
 “Father, have pity—once I had a child!”

A DIRGE

Let Summer go
 To other gardens; here we have no need of her.
 She smiles and beckons, but we take no heed of her,
 Who love not Summer, but bare boughs and snow.
Set the snow free
 To choke the insolent triumph of the year,
 With birds that sing as though he still were here,
 And flowers that blow as if he still could see.
Let the rose die—
 What ailed the rose to blow? she is not dear to us,
 Nor all the summer pageant that draws near to us;
 Let it be over soon, let it go by!
Let winter come,
 With the wild mourning of the wind-tossed boughs
 To drown the stillness of the empty house
 To which no more the little feet come home.

IV

EVENING SONG

When all the weary flowers,
 Worn out with sunlit hours,
 Droop o’er the garden beds
 Their little sleepy heads,
 The dewy dusk on quiet wings comes stealing;
 And, as the night descends,
 The shadows troop like friends
 To bring them healing.
So, weary of the light
 Of life too full and bright,
 We long for night to fall
 To wrap us from it all;
 Then death on dewy wings draws near and holds us,
 And like a kind friend come
 To children far from home,
 With love enfolds us.
But when the night is done,
 Fresh to the morning sun,
 Their little faces yet
 With night’s sweet dewdrops wet,
 The flowers awake to the new day’s new graces;
 And we, ah! shall we too
 Turn to the daydawn new
 Our tear-wet faces?

“THIS DESIRABLE MANSION”

The long white windows blankly stare
 Across the sodden, tangled grass,
 Weed-covered are the pathways where
 No footsteps ever pass;
 No whispers wake, no kisses die,
 No laughter thrills the dwindling flowers,
 Only the night hears sigh on sigh
 From ghosts of long-dead hours.
None come here now to laugh or weep;
 The spider spins on stair and hall,
 And round the windows shadows creep,
 And loathly creatures crawl.
 Cold is the hearth; the door is fast;
 No guest the silent threshold sees
 Save ghosts out of the happy past,—
 And one who is as these.

EBB-TIDE

Now the vexed clouds, wind-driven, spread wings of white,
 Long leaning wings across the sea and land.
 The waves creep back bequeathing to our sight
 The treasure-house of their deserted sand,
 And where the nearer waves curl white and low,
 Knee-deep in swirling brine the slow-foot shrimpers go.
Pale breadth of sand, where clamorous gulls confer,
 Marked with broad arrows by their planted feet;
 White rippled pools, where late deep waters were
 And ever the white waves marshalled in retreat
 And the grey wind in sole supremacy
 O’er opal and amber cold of darkening sky and sea.

ON THE DOWNS

The little moon is dead,
 Drowned in the flood of rain
 That drips from roof of byre and shed,
 And splashes in the lane:
 The leafless lean-flanked lane where last year’s leaves are spread.
The sheep cower in the fold,
 Where the rain beats them blind,
 Where scarce the rotten hurdles hold
 Against the weary wind
 That moans with angry tears across the pathless wold.
Dim lights across the down
 Show where the lone farms lie,
 The twisted trees have lost their brown,
 Are black against the sky,
 And far below blink lights, gay lights of Brighton town.
Ah, was the moon once bright?
 And did the thyme smell sweet
 Where, between dewy dusk and light,
 The warm turf felt our feet,
 And bean-flowers scented all the enchanted summer night?
Did sheep-bells tinkle clear
 Across the golden haze?
 Were the woods ever leafy-dear,
 In those forgotten days?
 The wet wind shrieks denial: no other voice speaks here.

NEW COLLEGE GARDENS, OXFORD

On this old lawn, where lost hours pass
 Across the shadows dark with dew,
 Where autumn on the thick sweet grass
 Has laid a weary leaf or two,
 When the young morning, keenly sweet,
 Breathes secrets to the silent air,
 Happy is he whose lingering feet
 May wander lonely there.
The enchantment of the dreaming limes,
 The magic of the quiet hours,
 Breathe unheard tales of other times
 And other destinies than ours;
The feet that long ago walked here
 Still, noiseless, walk beside our feet,
 Poor ghosts, who found this garden dear,
 And found the morning sweet!
Age weeps that it no more may hold
 The heart-ache that youth clasps so close,
 Pain finely shaped in pleasure’s mould,
 A thorn deep hidden in a rose.
 Here is the immortal thorny rose
 That may in no new garden grow—
 Its root is in the hearts of those
 Who walked here long ago.

TO A TULIP-BULB

Sleep first,
 And let the storm and winter do their worst;
 Let all the garden lie
 Bare to the angry sky,
 The shed leaves shiver and die
 Above your bed;
 Let the white coverlet
 Of sunlit snow be set
 Over your sleeping head,
 While in the earth you sleep
 Where dreams are dear and deep,
 And heed nor wind nor snow,
 Nor how the dark moons go.
 In this sad upper world where Winter’s hand
 Has bound with chains of ice the weary land.
Then wake
 To see the whole world lovely for Spring’s sake;
 The garden fresh and fair
 With green things everywhere,
 And winter’s want and care
 Banished and fled;
 Primrose and violet
 In every border set,
 With rain and sunshine fed.
 Then bless the fairy song
 That cradled you so long,
 And bless the fairy kiss
 That wakened you to this—
 A world where Winter’s dead and Spring doth reign
 And lovers whisper in the budding lane.

FEBRUARY

The trees stand brown against the gray,
 The shivering gray of field and sky;
 The mists wrapt round the dying day
 The shroud poor days wear as they die:
 Poor day, die soon, who lived in vain,
 Who could not bring my Love again!
Down in the garden breezes cold
 Dead rustling stalks blow chill between;
 Only, above the sodden mould,
 The wallflower wears his heartless green
 As though still reigned the rose-crowned year
 And summer and my Love were here.
The mists creep close about the house,
 The empty house, all still and chill;
 The desolate and trembling boughs
 Scratch at the dripping window sill:
 Poor day lies drowned in floods of rain,
 And ghosts knock at the window pane.

THE PROMISE OF SPRING