They've all long taken up again!
For me an' mine they're past an' done -
Aye, all but one - yes, all but one!
Since I kissed her 'neath Tullagh Hill
That one gerrl stays close wid me still.
Och! up to mine her face still lifts,
An' round us still the white May drifts;
An' her soft arm, in some ould way,
Is here beside me, night an' day;
But, faith, 'twas her they buried deep,
Wid all that love she couldn't keep,
Aye, deep an' cold, in Killinkere,
This many a year - this many a year!
Arthur Stringer [1874-
TO DIANE
The ruddy poppies bend and bow,
Diane! do you remember?
The sun you knew shines proudly now,
The lake still lists the breezes vow,
Your towers are fairer for their stains,
Each stone you smiled upon remains.
Sing low - where is Diane?
Diane! do you remember?
I come to find you through the years,
Diane! do you remember?
For none may rule my love's soft fears.
The ladies now are not your peers,
I seek you through your tarnished halls,
Pale sorrow on my spirit falls,
High, low - where is Diane?
Diane! do you remember?
I crush the poppies where I tread,
Diane! do you remember?
Your flower of life, so bright, so red -
She does not hear - Diane is dead.
I pace the sunny bowers alone
Where naught of her remains but stone.
Sing low - where is Diane?
Diane does not remember.
Helen Hay Whitney [18 -
"MUSIC I HEARD"
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.
For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!
Conrad Aiken [1889-
HER DWELLING-PLACE
Amid the fairest things that grow
My lady hath her dwelling-place;
Where runnels flow, and frail buds blow
As shy and pallid as her face.
The wild, bright creatures of the wood
About her fearless flit and spring;
To light her dusky solitude
Comes April's earliest offering.
The calm Night from her urn of rest
Pours downward an unbroken stream;
All day upon her mother's breast
My lady lieth in a dream.
Love could not chill her low, soft bed
With any sad memorial stone;
He put a red rose at her head -
A flame as fragrant as his own.
Ada Foster Murray [1857-1936]
THE WIFE FROM FAIRYLAND
Her talk was all of woodland things,
Of little lives that pass
Away in one green afternoon,
Deep in the haunted grass;
For she had come from fairyland,
The morning of a day
When the world that still was April
Was turning into May.
Green leaves and silence and two eyes -
'Twas so she seemed to me,
A silver shadow of the woods,
Whisper and mystery.
I looked into her woodland eyes,
And all my heart was hers,
And then I led her by the hand
Home up my marble stairs;
And all my granite and my gold
Was hers for her green eyes,
And all my sinful heart was hers
From sunset to sunrise;
I gave her all delight and ease
That God had given to me,
I listened to fulfil her dreams,
Rapt with expectancy.
But all I gave, and all I did,
Brought but a weary smile
Of gratitude upon her face;
As though a little while,
She loitered in magnificence
Of marble and of gold,
And waited to be home again
When the dull tale was told.
Sometimes, in the chill galleries,
Unseen, she deemed, unheard,
I found her dancing like a leaf
And singing like a bird.
So lone a thing I never saw
In lonely earth or sky,
So merry and so sad a thing,
One sad, one laughing, eye.
There came a day when on her heart
A wildwood blossom lay,
And the world that still was April
Was turning into May.
In the green eyes I saw a smile
That turned my heart to stone:
My wife that came from fairyland
No longer was alone.
For there had come a little hand
To show the green way home,
Home through the leaves, home through the dew,
Home through the greenwood - home.
Richard Le Gallienne [1866-
IN THE FALL O' YEAR
I went back an old-time lane
In the fall o' year,
There was wind and bitter rain
And the leaves were sere.
Once the birds were lilting high
In a far-off May -
I remember, you and I
Were as glad as they.
But the branches now are bare
And the lad you knew,
Long ago was buried there -
Long ago, with you!
Thomas S. Jones, Jr. [1882-1932]
THE INVISIBLE BRIDE
The low-voiced girls that go
In gardens of the Lord,
Like flowers of the field they grow
In sisterly accord.
Their whispering feet are white
Along the leafy ways;
They go in whirls of light
Too beautiful for praise.
And in their band forsooth
Is one to set me free -
The one that touched my youth -
The one God gave to me.
She kindles the desire
Whereby the gods survive -
The white ideal fire
That keeps my soul alive.
Now at the wondrous hour,
She leaves her star supreme,
And comes in the night's still power,
To touch me with a dream.
Sibyl of mystery
On roads beyond our ken,
Softly she comes to me,
And goes to God again.
Edwin Markham [1852-
RAIN ON A GRAVE
Clouds spout upon her
Their waters amain
In ruthless disdain, -
Her who but lately
Had shivered with pain
As at touch of dishonor
If there had lit on her
So coldly, so straightly
Such arrows of rain.
She who to shelter
Her delicate head
Would quicken and quicken
Each tentative tread
If drops chanced to pelt her
That summertime spills
In dust-paven rills
When thunder-clouds thicken
And birds close their bills.
Would that I lay there
And she were housed here!
Or better, together
Were folded away there
Exposed to one weather
We both, - who would stray there
When sunny the day there,
Or evening was clear
At the prime of the year.
Soon will be growing
Green blades from her mound,
And daisies be showing
Like stars on the ground,
Till she form part of them -
Ay - the sweet heart of them,
Loved beyond measure
With a child's pleasure
All her life's round.
Thomas Hardy [1840-1928]
PATTERNS
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whale-bone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime-tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding.
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled upon the ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon -
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam?" said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
Amy Lowell [1874-1925]
DUST
When the white flame in us is gone,
And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
To crumble in our separate night;
When your swift hair is quiet in death,
And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labor of my breath -
When we are dust, when we are dust! -
Not dead, not undesirous yet,
Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
Around the places where we died,
And dance as dust before the sun,
And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
About the errands of the wind.
And every mote, on earth or air,
Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
By eager and invisible ways,
Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
One mote of all the dust that's I
Shall meet one atom that was you.
Then in some garden hushed from wind,
Warm in a sunset's afterglow,
The lovers in the flowers will find
A sweet and strange unquiet grow
Upon the peace; and, past desiring,
So high a beauty in the air,
And such a light, and such a quiring,
And such a radiant ecstasy there,
They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,
Or out of earth, or in the height,
Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
Or two that pass, in light, to light,
Out of the garden, higher, higher. . . .
But in that instant they shall learn
The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
And the weak passionless hearts will burn
And faint in that amazing glow,
Until the darkness close above;
And they will know - poor fools, they'll know! -
One moment, what it is to love.
Rupert Brooke [1887-1915]
BALLAD
The roses in my garden
Were white in the noonday sun,
But they were dyed with crimson
Before the day was done.
All clad in golden armor,
To fight the Saladin,
He left me in my garden,
To weep, to sing, and spin.
When fell the dewy twilight
I heard the wicket grate,
There came a ghost who shivered
Beside my garden gate.
All clad in golden armor,
But dabbled with red dew;
He did not lift his vizor,
And yet his face I knew.
And when he left my garden
The roses all were red
And dyed in a fresh crimson;
Only my heart was dead.
The roses in my garden
Were white in the noonday sun;
But they were dyed with crimson
Before the day was done.
Maurice Baring [1874-
"THE LITTLE ROSE IS DUST, MY DEAR"
The little rose is dust, my dear;
The elfin wind is gone
That sang a song of silver words
And cooled our hearts with dawn.
And what is left to hope, my dear,
Or what is left to say?
The rose, the little wind and you
Have gone so far away.
Grace Hazard Conkling [18
DIRGE
Never the nightingale,
Oh, my dear,
Never again the lark
Thou wilt hear;
Though dusk and the morning still
Tap at thy window-sill,
Though ever love call and call
Thou wilt not hear at all,
My dear, my dear.
Adelaide Crapsey [1878-1914]
THE LITTLE RED RIBBON
The little red ribbon, the ring and the rose!
The summertime comes, and the summertime goes -
And never a blossom in all of the land
As white as the gleam of her beckoning hand!
The long winter months, and the glare of the snows;
The little red ribbon, the ring and the rose!
And never a glimmer of sun in the skies
As bright as the light of her glorious eyes!
Dreams only are true: but they fade and are gone -
For her face is not here when I waken at dawn;
The little red ribbon, the ring and the rose
Mine only; hers only the dream and repose.
I am weary of waiting, and weary of tears,
And my heart wearies, too, all these desolate years,
Moaning over the one only song that it knows, -
The little red ribbon, the ring and the rose!
James Whitcomb Riley [1849-1916]
THE ROSARY
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart,
My rosary.
Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer,
To still a heart in absence wrung;
I tell each bead unto the end and there
A cross is hung.
Oh memories that bless - and burn!
Oh barren gain - and bitter loss!
I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn
To kiss the cross,
Sweetheart,
To kiss the cross.
Robert Cameron Rogers [1862-1912]
LOVE'S FULFILMENT
"MY TRUE-LOVE HATH MY HEART"
From the "Arcadia"
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a better bargain driven;
His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his, because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded from his wounded heart;
For as from me, on him his hurt did light,
So still me thought in me his heart did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.
Philip Sidney [1554-1586]
SONG
O sweet delight, O more than human bliss,
With her to live that ever loving is!
To hear her speak whose words are so well placed
That she by them, as they in her are graced:
Those looks to view that feast the viewer's eye,
How blest is he that may so live and die!
Such love as this the Golden Times did know,
When all did reap, yet none took care to sow;
Such love as this an endless summer makes,
And all distaste from frail affection takes.
So loved, so blest, in my beloved am I:
Which till their eyes ache, let iron men envy!
Thomas Campion [ ? -1619]
THE GOOD-MORROW
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snored we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two fitter hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love just alike in all, none of these loves can die.
John Donne [1573-1631]
"THERE'S GOWD IN THE BREAST"
There's gowd in the breast of the primrose pale,
An' siller in every blossom;
There's riches galore in the breeze of the vale,
And health in the wild wood's bosom.
Then come, my love, at the hour of joy,
When warbling birds sing o'er us;
Sweet nature for us has no alloy,
And the world is all before us.
The courtier joys in hustle and power,
The soldier in war-steeds bounding,
The miser in hoards of treasured ore,
The proud in their pomp surrounding:
But we hae yon heaven sae bonnie and blue,
And laverocks skimming o'er us;
The breezes of health, and the valleys of dew -
Oh, the world is all before us!
James Hogg [1770-1835]
THE BEGGAR MAID
Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say:
Bare footed came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stepped down,
To meet and greet her on her way;
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day."
As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen:
One praised her ankles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien.
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been:
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
"This beggar maid shall be my queen!"
Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]
REFUGE
Twilight, a timid fawn, went glimmering by,
And Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast,
Ceaseless pursuit and flight were in the sky,
But the long chase had ceased for us at last.
We watched together while the driven fawn
Hid in the golden thicket of the day.
We, from whose hearts pursuit and flight were gone,
Knew on the hunter's breast her refuge lay.
A. E. (George William Russell) [1867-1935]
AT SUNSET
Clasp her and hold her and love her,
Here in the arching green
Of boughs that bend above her
With belts of blue between.
Clasp her and hold her and love her,
Swift! Ere the splendor dies;
The blue grows black above her,
The earth in shadow lies.
Flowers of dream enfold her.
Soft! Let me bend above,
Clasp her and love her and hold her,
Clasp her and hold and love.
Louis V. Ledoux [1880-
"ONE MORNING, OH! SO EARLY"
One morning, oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved,
All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they would cease;
'Twas a thrush sang in my garden, "Hear the story, hear the story!"
And the lark sang, "Give us glory!"
And the dove said, "Give us peace!"
Then I hearkened, oh! so early, my beloved, my beloved,
To that murmur from the woodland of the dove, my dear, the dove;
When the nightingale came after, "Give us fame to sweeten duty!"
When the wren sang, "Give us beauty!"
She made answer, "Give us love!"
Sweet is spring, and sweet the morning, my beloved, my beloved;
Now for us doth spring, doth morning, wait upon the year's increase,
And my prayer goes up, "Oh, give us, crowned in youth with marriage glory,
Give for all our life's dear story,
Give us love, and give us peace!"
Jean Ingelow [1820-1897]
ACROSS THE DOOR
The fiddles were playing and playing,
The couples were out on the floor;
From converse and dancing he drew me,
And across the door.
Ah! strange were the dim, wide meadows,
And strange was the cloud-strewn sky,
And strange in the meadows the corncrakes,
And they making cry!
The hawthorn bloom was by us,
Around us the breath of the south.
White hawthorn, strange in the night-time -
His kiss on my mouth!
Padraic Colum [1881-
MAY MARGARET
If you be that May Margaret
That lived on Kendal Green,
Then where's that sunny hair of yours
That crowned you like a queen?
That sunny hair is dim, lad,
They said was like a crown -
The red gold turned to gray, lad,
The night a ship went down.
If you be yet May Margaret,
May Margaret now as then,
Then where's that bonny smile of yours
That broke the hearts of men?
The bonny smile is wan, lad,
That once was glad as day -
And oh! 'tis weary smiling
To keep the tears away.
If you be that May Margaret,
As yet you swear to me,
Then where's that proud, cold heart of yours
That sent your love to sea?
Ah, me! that heart is broken,
The proud, cold heart has bled
For one light word outspoken,
For all the love unsaid.
Then Margaret, my Margaret,
If all you say be true,
Your hair is yet the sunniest gold,
Your eyes the sweetest blue.
And dearer yet and fairer yet
For all the coming years -
The fairer for the waiting,
The dearer for the tears!
Theophile Marzials [1850-
RONDEL
Kissing her hair, I sat against her feet,
Wove and unwove it, wound and found it sweet;
Made fast therewith her hands, drew down her eyes,
Deep as deep flowers and dreamy like dim skies;
With her own tresses bound and found her fair,
Kissing her hair.
Sleep were no sweeter than her face to me,
Sleep of cold sea-bloom under the cold sea;
What pain could get between my face and hers?
What new sweet thing would love not relish worse?
Unless, perhaps, white death had kissed me there,
Kissing her hair.
Algernon Charles Swinburne [1837-1909]
A SPRING JOURNEY
We journeyed through broad woodland ways,
My Love and I.
The maples set the shining fields ablaze.
The blue May sky
Brought to us its great Spring surprise;
While we saw all things through each other's eyes.
And sometimes from a steep hillside
Shone fair and bright
The shadhush, like a young June bride,
Fresh clothed in white.
Sometimes came glimpses glad of the blue sea;
But I smiled only on my Love; he smiled on me.
The violets made a field one mass of blue -
Even bluer than the sky;
The little brook took on that color too,
And sang more merrily.
"Your dress is blue," he laughing said. "Your eyes,"
My heart sang, "sweeter than the bending skies."
We spoke of poets dead so long ago,
And their wise words;
We glanced at apple-trees, like drifted snow;
We watched the nesting birds, -
Only a moment! Ah, how short the day!
Yet all the winters cannot blow its sweetness quite away.
Alice Freeman Palmer [1855-1902]
THE BROOKSIDE
I wandered by the brookside,
I wandered by the mill;
I could not hear the brook flow, -
The noisy wheel was still;
There was no burr of grasshopper,
No chirp of any bird,
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
I sat beneath the elm-tree;
I watched the long, long shade,
And, as it grew still longer,
I did not feel afraid;
For I listened, for a footfall,
I listened for a word, -
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
He came not, - no, he came not, -
The night came on alone, -
The little stars sat, one by one,
Each on his golden throne;
The evening wind passed by my cheek,
The leaves above were stirred, -
But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.
Fast silent tears were flowing,
When something stood behind;
A hand was on my shoulder, -
I knew its touch was kind:
It drew me nearer, - nearer, -
We did not speak one word,
For the beating of our own hearts
Was all the sound we heard.
Richard Monckton Milnes [1809-1885]
SONG
For me the jasmine buds unfold
And silver daisies star the lea,
The crocus hoards the sunset gold,
And the wild rose breathes for me.
I feel the sap through the bough returning,
I share the skylark's transport fine,
I know the fountain's wayward yearning;
I love, and the world is mine!
I love, and thoughts that sometime grieved,
Still well remembered, grieve not me;
From all that darkened and deceived
Upsoars my spirit free.
For soft the hours repeat one story,
Sings the sea one strain divine,
My clouds arise all flushed with glory;
I love, and the world is mine!
Florence Earle Coates [1850-1927]
WHAT MY LOVER SAID
By the merest chance, in the twilight gloom,
In the orchard path he met me;
In the tall, wet grass, with its faint perfume,
And I tried to pass, but he made no room,
Oh, I tried, but he would not let me.
So I stood and blushed till the grass grew red,
With my face bent down above it,
While he took my hand as he whispering said -
(How the clover lifted each pink, sweet head,
To listen to all that my lover said;
Oh, the clover in bloom, I love it!)
In the high, wet grass went the path to hide,
And the low, wet leaves hung over;
But I could not pass upon either side,
For I found myself, when I vainly tried,
In the arms of my steadfast lover.
And he held me there and he raised my head,
While he closed the path before me,
And he looked down into my eyes and said -
(How the leaves bent down from the boughs o'erhead
To listen to all that my lover said,
Oh, the leaves hanging lowly o'er me!)
Had he moved aside but a little way,
I could surely then have passed him;
And he knew I never could wish to stay,
And would not have heard what he had to say,
Could I only aside have cast him.
It was almost dark, and the moments sped,
And the searching night wind found us,
But he drew me nearer and softly said -
(How the pure, sweet wind grew still, instead,
To listen to all that my lover said;
Oh, the whispering wind around us!)