ilay

"I LOVE you, sweet: how can you ever learn

How much I love you?" "You I love even so,

And so I learn it."

How fair you are."

"Sweet, you cannot know "If fair enough to earn

Your love, so much is all my love's concern."

"My love grows hourly, sweet." "Mine too doth grow,

Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!"

Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.

Ah! happy they to whom such words as these

In youth have served for speech the whole day long, Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng, Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,—— What while Love breathed in sighs and silences Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.

SONNET XIV.

YOUTH'S SPRING-TRIBUTE.

On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
I lay, and spread your hair on either side,

And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
Look through the golden tresses here and there.
On these debateable borders of the year

Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow;
And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.

But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;

So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
Up your warm throat to your warm lips: for this
Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.

SONNET XV.

THE BIRTH-BOND.

HAVE you not noted, in some family

Where two were born of a first marriage-bed, How still they own their gracious bond, though fed And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?— How to their father's children they shall be

In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
And in a word complete community?

Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
That among souls allied to mine was yet
One nearer kindred than life hinted of.

O born with me somewhere that men forget,
And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

SONNET XVI.

A DAY OF LOVE.

THOSE envied places which do know her well,
And are so scornful of this lonely place,

Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
Nowhere but here she is: and while Love's spell
From his predominant presence doth compel
All alien hours, an outworn populace,

The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
With sweet confederate music favourable.

Now many memories make solicitous

The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit With quivering fire, the words take wing from it; As here between our kisses we sit thus

Speaking of things remembered, and so sit Speechless while things forgotten call to us.

WHAT dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
Incarnate flower of culminating day,-

What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,
Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast ;
What glory of change by Nature's hand amass'd
Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?

Love's very vesture and elect disguise

Was each fine movement,-wonder new-begot
Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
Unborn, that read these words and saw her not.

SONNET XVIII.

GENIUS IN BEAUTY.

BEAUTY like hers is genius. Not the call
Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,-
Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeaths
Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

As many men are poets in their youth,

But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong Even through all change the indomitable song ; So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,

Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

SONNET XIX.

SILENT NOON.

YOUR hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky :-
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

SONNET XX.

GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT.

EVEN as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,-
So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
What shall be said,-which, like a governing star,
Gathers and garners from all things that are
Their silent penetrative loveliness?

O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
Of cloud above and wave below, take wing

And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.

SONNET XXI.

LOVE-SWEETNESS.

SWEET dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded;

Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;

Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all :-

What sweeter than these things, except the thing

In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:-
The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,

The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,-
With still tears showering and averted face,

Inexplicably filled with faint alarms :

And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
Against all ills the fortified strong place
And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.

Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
And as soft waters warble to the moon,

Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.