World! is there one good thing in you,

Life, love, or death

-or what? Since lips that sang, I love thee,

Have said, I love thee not?

I think the sun's kiss will scarce fall
Into one flower's gold cup;
I think the bird will miss me,
And give the summer up.
O sweet place! desolate in tall
Wild grass, have you forgot
How her lips loved to kiss me,
Now that they kiss me not?

Be false or fair above me,

Come back with any face,
Summer!-do I care what you do?
You cannot change one place-
The grass, the leaves, the earth, the dew,
The grave I make the spot-

Here, where she used to love me,

Here, where she loves me not.

A. O'Shaughnessy

CXLVII

DEPARTURE

It was not like your great and gracious ways! Do you, that have nought other to lament, Never, my Love, repent

Of how, that July afternoon,

You went,

With sudden, unintelligible phrase,

And frighten'd eye,

Upon your journey of so many days

Without a single kiss, or a good-bye?

I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;

And so we sate, within the low sun's rays,

You whispering to me, for your voice was weak, Your harrowing praise.

Well, it was well,

To hear you such things speak,

And I could tell

What made your eyes a growing gloom of love,
As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.
And it was like your great and gracious ways
To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,
Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash

To let the laughter flash,

Whilst I drew near,

Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.

But all at once to leave me at the last,

More at the wonder than the loss aghast,

With huddled, unintelligible phrase,

And frighten'd eye,

And go your journey of all days

With not one kiss, or a good-bye,

And the only loveless look the look with which you

pass'd:

'Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.

CXLVIII

SONG

C. Fatmore

I made another garden, yea,
For my new love;

I left the dead rose where it lay,
And set the new above.
Why did the summer not begin?
Why did my heart not haste?
My old love came and walk'd therein,
And laid the garden waste.

She enter'd with her weary smile,
Just as of old;

She look'd around a little while,

And shiver'd at the cold.
Her passing touch was death to all,
Her passing look a blight :
She made the white rose-petals fall,
And turn'd the red rose white.

Her pale robe, clinging to the grass,
Seem'd like a snake

That bit the grass and ground, alas!
And a sad trail did make.

She went up slowly to the gate;
And there, just as of yore,

She turn'd back at the last to wait,
And say farewell once more.

A. O'Shaughnessy

CXLIX

THE LOST MISTRESS

All's over, then does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?

Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, to-day;

One day more bursts them open fully

-You know the red turns gray.

To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest ?
May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we,-well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:

For each glance of the eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart's endeavour,-
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!—

Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;

I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!

R. Browning

CL

ECHO

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;

Come back in tears,

O memory, hope, love of finish'd years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimful of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes

Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

Speak low, lean low,

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

C. G. Rossetti

CLI

GREATER MEMORY

In the neart there lay buried for years
Love's story of passion and tears;
Of the heaven that two had begun,

And the horror that tore them apart,
When one was love's slayer, but one

Made a grave for the love in his heart.

The long years pass'd weary and lone,
And it lay there and changed there unknown;
Then one day from its innermost place,

In the shamed and the ruin'd love's stead, Love arose with a glorified face,

Like an angel that comes from the dead.

It uplifted the stone that was set

On that tomb which the heart held yet;
But the sorrow had moulder'd within,

And there came from the long closed door
A clear image, that was not the sin
Or the grief that lay buried before.

The grief it was long wash'd away
In the weeping of many a day;
And the terrible past lay afar,

Like a dream left behind in the night;
And the memory that woke was a star
Shining pure in the soul's pure light.

There was never the stain of a tear
On the face that was ever so dear;
'Twas the same in each lovelier way;
'Twas the old love's holier part,
And the dream of the earliest day
Brought back to the desolate heart.

It was knowledge of all that had been
In the thought, in the soul unseen;
'Twas the word which the lips could not say
To redeem and recover the past;

It was more than was taken away
Which the heart got back at the last.

The passion that lost its spell,
The rose that died where it fell,
The look that was look'd in vain,
The prayer that seem'd lost evermore,
They were found in the heart again,

With all that the heart would restore.