I knew her foot upon the stair,
Her figure chained my inmost eye;
I only looked a lover's lie,--
I feigned indifference, felt despair.
My very blood leaped up, aware
Of her free step and morning air;
She raised her head, she caught my eye--
Could she have guessed?
I faced her with a chilly stare,
With words so common and so bare!
Her whispering skirts, as she went by,
Swept every sense--a thrilling sigh!
Ah, would her heart have heard my prayer
Could she have guessed?
ELAINE GOODALE.
FIRST SIGHT.
When first we met the nether world was white,
And on the steel-blue ice before her bower
I skated in the sunrise for an hour,
Till all the grey horizon, gulphed in light,
Was red against the bare boughs black as night;
Then suddenly her sweet face, like a flower
Enclosed in sables from the frost's dim power,
Shone at her casement, and flashed burning bright
When first we met!
My skating being done, I loitered home,
And sought that day to lose her face again;
But love was weaving in his golden loom
My story up with hers, and all in vain
I strove to loose the threads he spun amain
When first we met!
EDMUND GOSSE.
EXPECTATION.
When flower-time comes and all the woods are gay,
When linnets chirrup and the soft winds blow,
Adown the winding river I will row,
And watch the merry maidens tossing hay,
And troops of children shouting in their play,
And with my thin oars flout the fallen snow
Of heavy hawthorn blossom as I go:
And shall I see my love at fall of day
When flower-time comes?
Ah, yes! for by the border of the stream
She binds red roses to a trim alcove,
And I shall fade into her summer-dream
Of musing upon love,--nay, even seem
To be myself the very god of love,
When flower-time comes!
EDMUND GOSSE.
IN THE GRASS.
Oh! flame of grass, shot upward from the earth,
Keen with a thousand quivering sunlit fires,
Green with the sap of satisfied desires
And sweet fulfilment of your pale sad birth,
Behold! I clasp you as a lover might,
Roll on you, bathing in the noonday sun,
And, if it might be, I would fain be one
With all your odour, mystery, and light,
Oh flame of grass!
For here, to chasten my untimely gloom,
My lady took my hand and spoke my name;
The sun was on her gold hair like a flame;
The bright wind smote her forehead like perfume;
The daisies darkened at her feet; she came,
As spring comes, scattering incense on your bloom
Oh flame of grass!
EDMUND GOSSE.
BY THE WELL.
Hot hands that yearn to touch her flower-like face,
With fingers spread, I set you like a weir
To stem this ice-cold stream in its career,--
And chill your pulses there a little space;
Brown hands, what right have you to claim the grace
To touch her head so infinitely dear?
Learn courteously to wait and to revere,
Lest haply ye be found in sorry case,
Hot hands that yearn!
But if ye pluck her flowers at my behest,
And bring her crystal water from the well,
And bend a bough for shade when she will rest,
And if she find you fain and teachable,
That flower-like face, perchance, ah! who can tell?
In your embrace may some sweet day be found,
Hot hands that yearn!
EDMUND GOSSE.
A GARDEN PIECE.
Among the flowers of summer-time she stood,
And underneath the films and blossoms shone
Her face, like some pomegranate strangely grown
To ripe magnificence in solitude;
The wanton winds, deft whisperers, had strewed
Her shoulders with her shining hair outblown,
And dyed her robe with many a changing tone
Of silvery green, and all the hues that brood
Among the flowers;
She raised her arm up for her dove to know
That he might perch him on her lovely head;
Then I, unseen, and rising on tip-toe,
Bowed over the rose-barrier, and lo,
Touched not her arm, but kissed her lips instead
Among the flowers!
EDMUND GOSSE.
LOVERS' QUARREL.
Beside the stream and in the alder-shade,
Love sat with us one dreamy afternoon,
When nightingales and roses made up June,
And saw the red light and the amber fade
Under the canopy the willows made,
And watched the rising of the hollow moon,
And listened to the water's gentle tune,
And was as silent as she was, sweet maid,
Beside the stream;
Till with "Farewell!" he vanished from our sight,
And in the moonlight down the glade afar
His light wings glimmered like a falling star;
Then ah! she took the left path, I the right,
And now no more we sit by noon or night
Beside the stream!
EDMUND GOSSE.
IF LOVE SHOULD FAINT.
If Love should faint, and half decline
Below the fit meridian sign,
And shorn of all his golden dress,
His royal state and loveliness,
Be no more worth a heart like thine,
Let not thy nobler passion pine,
But with a charity divine,
Let Memory ply her soft address
If Love should faint;
And oh! this laggard heart of mine,
Like some halt pilgrim stirred with wine,
Shall ache in pity's dear distress,
Until the balm of thy caress
To work the finished cure combine,
If Love should faint.
EDMUND GOSSE.
MY LOVE TO ME.
My love to me is always kind:
She neither storms, nor is she pined;
She does not plead with tears or sighs,
But gentle words and soft replies--
Dear earnests of the thought behind.
They say the little god is blind,
They do not count him quite too wise;
Yet he, somehow, could bring and bind
My love to me.
And sweetest nut hath sourest rind?
It may be so; but she I prize
Is even lovelier in mine eyes
Than good and gracious to my mind.
I bless the fortune that consigned
My love to me.
W. E. HENLEY.
WITH STRAWBERRIES.
With strawberries we filled a tray,
And then we drove away, away
Along the links beside the sea,
Where wave and wind were light and free,
And August felt as fresh as May.
And where the springy turf was gay
With thyme and balm and many a spray
Of wild roses, you tempted me
With strawberries!
A shadowy sail, silent and grey,
Stole like a ghost across the bay;
But none could hear me ask my fee,
And none could know what came to be.
Can sweethearts _all_ their thirst allay
With strawberries?
W. E. HENLEY.
A FLIRTED FAN.
A flirted fan of blade and gold
Is wondrous winsome to behold:
It seems an armoured shard to bear
The Emperor-Scarab--strange and rare,
Metallic, lustrous, jewel-cold.
Fawning and fluttering fold on fold
And scale on scale, its charm unrolled,
Lures, dazzles, slays. It thrills the air,
A flirted fan!
Ah me, that night ... I cannot scold--
_Ich grolle nicht!_ My grief untold
Shall still remain, but I will swear
Some Spanish grace, dissembled there,
Stood by her stall, she so controlled
A flirted fan.
W. E. HENLEY.
IN ROTTEN ROW.
In Rotten Row a cigarette
I sat and smoked, with no regret
For all the tumult that had been.
The distances were still and green,
And streaked with shadows cool and wet.
Two sweethearts on a bench were set,
Two birds among the boughs were met;
So love and song were heard and seen
In Rotten Row.
A horse or two there was to fret
The soundless sand; but work and debt,
Fair flowers and falling leaves between,
While clocks are chiming clear and keen,
A man may very well forget
In Rotten Row.
W. E. HENLEY.
THE LEAVES ARE SERE.
The leaves are sere, and on the ground
They rustle with an eerie sound,
A sound half-whisper and half-sigh--
The plaint of sweet things fain to die,
Poor things for which no ruth is found.
With summer once the land was crowned;
But now that autumn scatters round
Decay, and summer fancies die,
The leaves are sere.
Once, too, my thought within the bound
Of summer frolicked, like a hound
In meadows jocund with July.
And now I sit and wonder why,
With all my waste of plack and pound,
The leaves are sere!
W. E. HENLEY.
WITH A FAN FROM RIMMEL'S.
Go, happy Fan, in all the land
The happiest ... seek my lady's hand,
And, swinging at her winsome waist,
Forget for aye, so greatly graced,
The House of Odours in the Strand.
Ivory, with lilac silk outspanned,
With ruffling black sedately grand,
With bloom of eglantine o'ertraced,
Go, happy Fan.
Her kindly heart will understand,
Her gentle eyes will grow more bland
At sight of you. Away in haste,
Dear New Year's gift! Such perfect taste
As yours her praises _may_ command ...
Go, happy Fan!
W. E. HENLEY.
IF I WERE KING.
If I were king, my pipe should be premier.
The skies of time and chance are seldom clear,
We would inform them all with bland blue weather.
Delight alone would need to shed a tear,
For dream and deed should war no more together.
Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear;
Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather;
And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere,
If I were king.
But politics should find no harbour near;
The Philistine should fear to slip his tether;
Tobacco should be duty free, and beer;
In fact, in room of this, the age of leather,
An age of gold all radiant should appear,
If I were king.
W. E. HENLEY.
THE GODS ARE DEAD.
The gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows?
Living at least in Lempriere undeleted,
The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose,
Are one and all, I like to think, retreated
In some still land of lilacs and the rose.
Once high they sat, and high o'er earthly shows
With sacrificial dance and song were greeted.
Once ... long ago: but now the story goes,
The gods are dead.
It must be true. The world a world of prose,
Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted,
Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze.
Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows
Who will may hear the sorry words repeated--
The gods are dead.
W. E. HENLEY.
HER LITTLE FEET.
Her little feet!... Beneath us ranged the sea,
She sat, from sun and wind umbrella-shaded,
One shoe above the other danglingly,
And lo! a Something exquisitely graded,
Brown rings and white, distracting--to the knee!
The band was loud. A wild waltz melody
Flowed rhythmic forth. The nobodies paraded.
And thro' my dream went pulsing fast and free:
Her little feet.
Till she made room for some one. It was He!
A port-wine-flavoured He, a He who traded,
Rich, rosy, round, obese to a degree!
A sense of injury overmastered me.
Quite bulbously his ample boots upbraided
Her little feet.
W. E. HENLEY.
WHEN YOU ARE OLD.
When you are old, and I am passed away--
Passed, and your face, your golden face, is grey--
I think, whate'er the end, this dream of mine,
Comforting you, a friendly star will shine
Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray.
So may it be; that so dead Yesterday,
No sad-eyed ghost, but generous and gay,
May serve your memories like almighty wine,
When you are old.
Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway
Of death the past's enormous disarray
Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign,
Live on well pleased! Immortal and divine,
Love shall still tend you, as God's angels may,
When you are old.
W. E. HENLEY.
MY BOOKS.
These are my books-a Burton old,
A Lamb arrayed against the cold
In polished dress of red and blue,
A rare old Elzevir or two,
And Johnson clothed in green and gold.
A Pope in gilded calf I sold,
To buy a Sterne of worth untold,
To cry, as bibliomaniacs do,
"These are my books!"
What though a Fate unkind hath doled
But favours few to me, yet bold
My little wealth abroad I strew,
To purchase acquisitions new,
And say by love of them controlled,
These are my books.
NATHAN M. LEVY.
MOST SWEET OF ALL.
Most sweet of all the flowers memorial
That autumn tends beneath his wasted trees,
Where wearily the unremembering breeze
Whirls the brown leaves against the blackening wall
More sweet than those that summer fed so tall
And glad with soft wind blowing overseas;
Through all incalculable distances
Of many shades that swerve and sands that crawl,
Most sweet of all!
When comes the fulness of the time to me
As yours is full to-day, O flower of mine?
Touched by her hand who evermore shall be,
While the slow planets circle for a sign,
Till periods flag and constellations fall,
Most sweet of all!
"_Love in Idleness._"
THE REDBREAST.
In country lanes the robins sing,
Clear-throated, joyous, swift of wing,
From misty dawn to dewy eve
(Though cares of nesting vex and grieve)
Their little heart-bells ring and ring.
And when the roses say to Spring:
"Your reign is o'er" when breezes bring
The scent of spray that lovers weave
In country lanes,
The redbreast still is heard to fling
His music forth; and he will cling
To Autumn till the winds bereave
Her yellowing trees, nor will he leave
Till Winter finds him shivering
In country lanes.
C. H. LÜDERS.
TO Q(UINTUS) H(ORATIUS) F(LACCUS).
To Q. H. F. the idle band
Of poetasters oft has planned
Tributes of praise--and penned them, too--
For love of verse that keeps its hue
Though dead its language and its land.
True, Pegasus has ever fanned
The ether at a bard's command,
But ah! how eagerly he flew
To Q. H. F.
Not oversweet or overgrand
Your poems, Horace, hence your stand
Firm in the hearts of men: and few
Have gained a place so clearly due,
Since Death with unrelenting hand,
Took you, H. F.
C. H. LÜDERS.
LOVE IN LONDON.
In London town men love and hate,
And find Death tragic soon or late,
Just in the old unreasoning way,
As if they breathed the warmer day
In Athens when the gods were great.
Mine is the town by Thames's spate,
And so it chanced I found my fate,
One of my fates, that is to say--
In London town.
The whole world comes to those who wait;
Mine came and went with one year's date.
Pity it made so short a stay!
The sweetest face, the sweetest sway
That ever Love did consecrate
In London town.
JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.
SLEEP.
O happy sleep! that bear'st upon thy breast
The blood-red poppy of enchanting rest,
Draw near me through the stillness of this place
And let thy low breath move across my face,
As faint winds move above a poplar's crest.
The broad seas darken slowly in the west;
The wheeling sea-birds call from nest to nest;
Draw near and touch me, leaning out of space,
O happy Sleep!
There is no sorrow hidden or confess'd,
There is no passion uttered or suppress'd,
Thou can'st not for a little while efface;
Enfold me in thy mystical embrace,
Thou sovereign gift of God, most sweet, most blest,
O happy Sleep!
ADA LOUISE MARTIN.
TO TAMARIS.
It is enough to love you. Let me be
Only an influence, as the wandering sea
Answers the moon that yet foregoes to shine;
Only a sacrifice, as in a shrine
The lamp burns on where dead eyes cannot see;
Only a hope unknown, withheld from thee,
Yet ever like a petrel plaintively,
Just following on to life's far twilight line,
It is enough.
Go where you will, I follow. _You_ are free.
Alone, unloved, to all eternity
I track that chance no virtue can divine,
When pitiful, loving, with fond hands in mine,
You say: "True heart, here take your will of me,
It is enough."
THEO. MARZIALS.
WHEN I SEE YOU.
When I see you my heart sings
Deep within me for deep love;
In my deep heart's dreamiest grove,
Your bright image comes like Spring's,
Bringing back the murmured dove
To the wan dim watersprings.
Would my tongue could tell the things
Love seems but one echo of
When I see you!
Hope lies dying, Time's disproof
Strips love's roses to the stings;
But the bird that knows its wings
Bear it where it will aloof,
Sings not, Love, as my heart sings
When I see you.
THEO. MARZIALS.
CARPE DIEM.
To-day, what is there in the air
That makes December seem sweet May?
There are no swallows anywhere,
Nor crocuses to crown your hair,
And hail you down my garden way.
Last night the full moon's frozen stare
Struck me, perhaps; or did you say
Really,--you'd come, sweet friend and fair!
To-day?
To-day is here:--come! crown to-day
With Spring's delight or Spring's despair,
Love cannot bide old Time's delay:--
Down my glad gardens light winds play,
And my whole life shall bloom and bear
To-day.
THEO. MARZIALS.
THE OLD AND THE NEW.
The Old Year goes down-hill so slow
And silent that he seems to know
The mighty march of time, foretelling
His passing: into his eyelids welling
Come tears of bitter pain and woe.
The lusty blast can scarce forego
His cape about his ears to blow,
As feebly to his final dwelling
The Old Year goes.
Within the belfry, row on row,
The bells are swinging to and fro;
Now joyfully the chimes are swelling--
Now solemn and few the notes are knelling--
For here the New Year comes:--and lo!
The Old Year goes!
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
SUB ROSA.
Under the rows of gas-jets bright,
Bathed in a blazing river of light,
A regal beauty sits; above her
The butterflies of fashion hover,
And burn their wings, and take to flight.
Mark you her pure complexion,-white
Though flush may follow flush? Despite
Her blush, the lily I discover
Under the rose.
All compliments to her are trite;
She has adorers left and right;
And I confess, here, under cover
Of secrecy, I too-I love her!
Say naught; she knows it not. 'Tis quite
Under the rose.
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
"VIOLET."
Violet, delicate, sweet,
Down in the deep of the wood,
Hid in thy still retreat,
Far from the sound of the street,
Man and his merciless mood:-
Safe from the storm and the heat,
Breathing of beauty and good
Fragrantly, under thy hood
Violet.
Beautiful maid, discreet,
Where is the mate that is meet,
Meet for thee-strive as he could-
Yet will I kneel at thy feet,
Fearing another one should,
Violet!
COSMO MONKHOUSE.
O SCORN ME NOT.
O scorn me not, although my worth be slight,
Although the stars alone can match thy light,
Although the wind alone can mock thy grace,
And thy glass only show so fair a face--
Yet--let me find some favour in thy sight.
The proud stars will not bend from their chill height,
Nor will the wind thy faithfulness requite.
Thy mirror gives thee but a cold embrace.
O scorn me not.
My lamp is feeble, but by day or night
It shall not wane, and, but for thy delight,
My footsteps shall not for a little space
Forego the echo of thy tender pace,-
I would so serve and guard thee if I might.
O scorn me not.
COSMO MONKHOUSE.
TEN THOUSAND POUNDS.
Ten thousand Pounds (a-year), no more
Nor less will suit. A man is poor
Without his horses and his cows,
His city and his country house,
His salmon river and his moor;
And many things unmissed before
Would be desired and swell the score;
But 'tis enough when fate allows
Ten thousand Pounds.
But O, my babies on the floor;
My wife's blithe welcome at the door;
My bread well-earned with sweat of brows;
My garden flowerful, green of boughs;
Friends, books;-I would not change ye for
Ten thousand Pounds.
COSMO MONKHOUSE.
ONE OF THESE DAYS.
One of these days, my lady whispereth,
A day made beautiful with summer's breath,
Our feet shall cease from these divided ways,
Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze
And flower together in a mingling wreath.
No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze,
No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze;
Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith,
One of these days.
Ah love, my love! Athwart how many Mays
The old hope lures us with its long delays!
How many winters waste our fainting faith!
I wonder, will it come this side of death,
With any of the old sun in its rays,
One of these days?
JOHN PAYNE.
LIFE LAPSES BY.
Life lapses by for you and me;
Our sweet days pass us by and flee
And evermore death draws us nigh;
The blue fades fast out of our sky,
The ripple ceases from our sea.
What would we not give, you and I,
The early sweet of life to buy?
Alas! sweetheart, that cannot we;
Life lapses by.
But though our young days buried lie,
Shall love with Spring and Summer die?
What if the roses faded be?
We in each other's eyes will see
New Springs, nor question how or why
Life lapses by.
JOHN PAYNE.
BEYOND THE NIGHT.
Beyond the night no withered rose
Shall mock the later bud that blows,
Nor lily blossom e'er shall blight,
But all shall gleam more pure and white
Than starlight on the Arctic snows.
Sigh not when daylight dimmer grows,
And life a turbid river flows,
For all is sweetness-all is light
Beyond the night.
Oh, haste, sweet hour that no man knows;
Uplift us from our cumbering woes
Where joy and peace shall crown the right,
And perished hopes shall blossom bright-
To aching hearts bring sweet repose
Beyond the night.
SAMUEL MINTURN PECK.
AMONG MY BOOKS.
Among my books-what rest is there
From wasting woes! what balm for care!
If ills appal or clouds hang low,
And drooping dim the fleeting show,
I revel still in visions rare.
At will I breathe the classic air,
The wanderings of Ulysses share;
Or see the plume of Bayard flow
Among my books.
Whatever face the world may wear-
If Lilian has no smile to spare,
For others let her beauty blow,
Such favours I can well forgo;
Perchance forget the frowning fair
Among my books.
SAMUEL MINTURN PECK.
I GO MY GAIT.
I go my gait, and if my way
Is cheered by song and roundelay,
Or if I bear upon my road,
Like Issachar, a double load,
I sing and bear as best I may.
But lo a rondeau! Can I say,
While halting thus my toll to pay
Before a stile now _a la mode_,
I go my gate?
Ah truly; if for once I stray
Into the treadmill,-'tis in play.
I will not own its narrow code,
It shall not be my cramped abode.
Free of the fields, in open day
I go my gait!
EMILY PFEIFFER.
(TO LOUIS HONORE FRÉCHETTE.)
Laurels for song! And nobler bays,
In old Olympian golden days
Of clamour thro' the clear-eyed morn,
No bowed triumphant head hath borne
Victorious in all Hellas' gaze!
They watched his glowing axles graze
The goal, and rent the heavens with praise;-
Yet the supremer heads have worn
Laurels for song.
So thee, from no palaestra-plays
A conqueror, to the gods we raise,
Whose brows of all our singers born
The sacred fillets chief adorn,-
Who first of all our choice displays
Laurels for song.
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS.
"WITHOUT ONE KISS."
Without one kiss she's gone away,
And stol'n the brightness out of day;
With scornful lips and haughty brow
She's left me melancholy now,
In spite of all that I could say.
And so, to guess as best I may
What angered her, awhile I stay
Beneath this blown acacia bough,
Without one kiss;
Yet all my wildered brain can pay
My questioning, is but to pray
Persuasion may my speech endow,
And Love may never more allow
My injured sweet to sail away
Without one kiss.
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS.
VIS EROTIS.
Love that holdeth firm in fee
Many a lord of many a land,
From thy thraldom few would flee;
Wide the wondrous potency
Of thy heart-enchanting hand.
Since on shining Cyprian sand
Did thy mother, Venus, stand,
Man and maid have worshipped thee,
Love.
They that scorn thy slaves to be,
Oft before thy throne, unmanned,
Grant thy great supremacy;
Hear my prayer, O Monarch, and
Let my lady smile on me,
Love.
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
WHEN SIRIUS SHINES.
When Sirius shines, a fulgent fire,
And locusts in a drowsy choir
At noon within the maples drone,
And pines at nightfall make sad moan
Like waves upon the rocks of Tyre,
Then strike the softly sounding lyre,
And let the soaring song rise higher,
Or fall to minor monotone,
When Sirius shines.
But should the chiming voices tire,
And thoughts of past and vain desire
Refill the mind, as doves once flown
Return to cotes aforetime known,
Then let the soul to heaven aspire,
When Sirius shines.
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
AT PEEP OF DAWN.
At peep of dawn the daffodil
That slumbers 'neath the grassy hill
Greets smilingly, with lifted head,
The rosy morn's oncoming tread,
The thrush sings matins by the rill.
The swallows from the ruined mill
Go coursing through the air, and fill
The sky with songs till then unsaid
At peep of dawn.
No harbinger of day is still.
With pipe new tuned and merry trill,
The lark uprises from her bed
'Mong grasses wet with dews unshed,
And puts to shame the whip-poor-will
At peep of dawn.
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
IN GREENWOOD GLEN.
In greenwood glen, where greedy bees
Drain fragrant flower-cups to the lees,
When summer's shining lances smite
The grain-fields gleaming golden bright,
I hear Æolian melodies.
The music bounds along the breeze
In ever-changing symphonies,
And lulls my soul with calm delight
In Greenwood glen.
Elusively it faints and flees,
Retreats, returns,-but no one sees
The piper; for, as in affright,
He skilfully eludes the sight;
'Tis Pan who hides amid the trees,
In Greenwood glen.
CLINTON SCOLLARD.
HER CHINA CUP.
Her china cup is white and thin;
A thousand times her heart has been
Made merry at its scalloped brink;
And in the bottom, painted pink,
A dragon greets her with a grin.
The brim her kisses loves to win;
The handle is a manikin,
Who spies the foes that chip or chink
Her china cup.
Muse, tell me if it be a sin:
I watch her lift it past her chin
Up to the scarlet lips and drink
The Oolong draught, somehow I think
I'd like to be the dragon in
Her china cup.
FRANK DEMPSTER SHERMAN.
BEHIND HER FAN.