THE GENTLE SOUTH
After dark vapours have oppressed our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relieved from its pains,
Takes as a long-lost sight the feel of May,
The eyelids with the passing coolness play,
Like rose-leaves with the drip of summer rains.
The calmest thoughts come round us—as of leaves
Budding; fruit ripening in stillness; autumn suns
Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves;
Sweet Sappho’s cheek; a sleeping infant’s breath;
The gradual sand that through an hour-glass runs;
A woodland rivulet; a poet’s death.
LAST SONNET
Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.