I SAID: "Nay, pluck not,-let the first fruit be: I say: "Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun ONCE more the changed year's turning wheel returns : And as a girl sails balanced in the wind, And now before and now again behind Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,— So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd With the dead boughs that winter still must bind, And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns. Behold, this crocus is a withering flame; This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art. Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them, Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem The white cup shrivels round the golden heart. SWEET Stream-fed glen, why say "farewell" to thee Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth The brow of Time where man may read no ruth? Nay, do thou rather say "farewell" to me, Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare SONNET LXXXV. VAIN VIRTUES. WHAT is the sorriest thing that enters Hell? Night sucks them down, the tribute of the pit, Whose names, half entered in the book of Life, · Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit To gaze, but, yearning, waits his destined wife, The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there. THE lost days of my life until to-day, What were they, could I see them on the street Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat God knows I know the faces I shall see, SONNET LXXXVII. DEATH'S SONGSTERS. WHEN first that horse, within whose populous womb The same was he who, lashed to his own mast, There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves, Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd, Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . . Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee, Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory? SONNET LXXXVIII. HERO'S LAMP.1 THAT lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night, To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light SONNET LXXXIX. THE TREES OF THE GARDEN. YE who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye Of some inexorable supremacy Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes, Sphinx-faced with unabashed augury? Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day Whose roots are hillocks where the children play; Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke [wage Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age. 1 After the deaths of Leander and of Hero, the signal-lamp was dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it unless his love had proved fortunate. "RETRO ME, SATHANA !” GET thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled, Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair, It shall be sought and not found anywhere. SONNET XCI. LOST ON BOTH SIDES. As when two men have loved a woman well, And the long pauses of this wedding-bell; Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns. |