I SAID: "Nay, pluck not,-let the first fruit be:
Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
Sees in the stream its own fecundity
And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
At the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?"

I say: "Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun
Too long, 'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
And the woods wail like echoes from the sea."

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
By other streams, what while in fragrant youth
The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
In hours to come, than when an hour ago
Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.

SONNET LXXXV.

VAIN VIRTUES.

WHAT is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
None of the sins,-but this and that fair deed
Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
Of anguish, while the pit's pollution leaves
Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

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
Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway?
I do not see them here; but after death

God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
"I am thyself,-what hast thou done to me?"
"And I—and I--thyself," (lo! each one saith,)
"And thou thyself to all eternity!"

SONNET LXXXVII.

DEATH'S SONGSTERS.

WHEN first that horse, within whose populous womb
The birth was death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home;
She whispered, “Friends, I am alone; come, come!
Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

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,
O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take

To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.

Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.
That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
Till some one man the happy issue see
Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,
O brother, what brought love to them or thee?

SONNET LXXXIX.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN.

YE who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
And still stand silent :-is it all a show,-
A wisp that laughs upon the wall ?-decree

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,
Stooping against the wind, a charioteer

Is snatched from out his chariot by the hair,
So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world :
Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,

It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled,
Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.
Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
For certain years, for certain months and days.

SONNET XCI.

LOST ON BOTH SIDES.

As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit ;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet

And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;

Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell :-

So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since :
So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among

Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.