SONNET XXIII.

LOVE'S BAUBLES.

I STOOD Where Love in brimming armfuls bore
Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit :
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.
And from one hand the petal and the core

Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,-
Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
And as I took them, at her touch they shone
With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
And then Love said: "Lo! when the hand is hers,
Follies of love are love's true ministers."

SONNET XXIV.

PRIDE OF YOUTH.

EVEN as a child, of sorrow that we give
The dead, but little in his heart can find,
Since without need of thought to his clear mind
Their turn it is to die and his to live :-
Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.

There is a change in every hour's recall,

And the last cowslip in the fields we see
On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
Alas for hourly change! Alas for all

The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
Even as the beads of a told rosary!

SONNET XXV.

WINGED HOURS.

EACH hour until we meet is as a bird

That wings from far his gradual way along
The rustling covert of my soul,-his song

Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
But at the hour of meeting, a clear word

Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;

Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong, Full oft through our contending joys unheard.

What of that hour at last, when for her sake

No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
And think how she, far from me, with like eyes

Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?

SONNET XXVI.

MID-RAPTURE.

THOU lovely and beloved, thou my love;

Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning

eyes,

Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,

Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above

All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
Is like a hand laid softly on the soul; |

Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of :-
What word can answer to thy word,-what gaze

To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
My worshiping face, till I am mirrored there
Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
O lovely and beloved, O my love?

X

SONNET XXVII.

HEART'S COMPASS.

SOMETIMES thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are;
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;

Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
Being of its furthest fires oracular;—

The evident heart of all life sown and mown.

Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.

WHAT other woman could be loved like you,
Or how of you should love possess his fill?
After the fulness of all rapture, still,-
As at the end of some deep avenue
A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view
Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,---
Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.

And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings
Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
From limpid lambent hours of day begun ;-

Even so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth move
My soul with changeful light of infinite love.

SONNET XXIX.

THE MOONSTAR.

LADY, I thank thee for thy loveliness,

Because my lady is more lovely still.

Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress Of delicate life Love labours to assess

My lady's absolute queendom; saying, "Lo! How high this beauty is, which yet doth show But as that beauty's sovereign votaress."

Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;

And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround, An emulous star too near the moon will ride,— Even so thy rays within her luminous bound

Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd, Lady, not thou but she was glorified.

SONNET XXX.

LAST FIRE.

LOVE, through your spirit and mine what summer eve
Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west
And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
Awhile now softlier let your bosom heave,

As in Love's harbour, even that loving breast,
All care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.

Many the days that Winter keeps in store,

Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses

Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees. This day at least was Summer's paramour,

Sun-coloured to the imperishable core

With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease.

SONNET XXXI.

HER GIFTS.

HIGH grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal
Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;
A glance like water brimming with the sky
Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral

The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply
All music and all silence held thereby ;
Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal;
A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine
To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,
And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign :-
These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.
Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.

SONNET XXXII.

EQUAL TROTH.

NOT by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
For how should I be loved as I love thee ?—
I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely

All gifts that with thy queenship best behove ;-
Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,

And crowned with garlands culled from every tree,
Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
All beauties and all mysteries interwove.

But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
"Then only" (say'st thou) "could I love thee less,
When thou couldst doubt my love's equality."
Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,-
Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.