LADY MINE

LADY mine, most fair thou art

With youth’s gold and white and red;

’Tis a pity that thy heart

Is so much harder than thy head.

This has stayed my kisses oft,

This from all thy charms debarr’d,

That thy head is strangely soft,

While thy heart is strangely hard.

Nothing had kept us apart—

I had loved thee, I had wed—

Hadst thou had a softer heart

Or a harder head.

But I think I’ll bear Love’s smart

Till the wound has healed and fled,

Or thy head is like thy heart,

Or thy heart is like thy head.

Herbert Edwin Clarke.

THE RIPEST PEACH[A]

THE ripest peach is highest on the tree—

And so her love, beyond the reach of me,

Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow

Her heart down to me where I worship now!

She looms aloft where every eye may see

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.

Such fruitage as her love I know, alas!

I may not reach here from the orchard grass.

I drink the sunshine showered past her lips

As roses drain the dewdrop as it drips.

The ripest peach is highest on the tree,

And so mine eyes gaze upward eagerly.

Why—why do I not turn away in wrath

And pluck some heart here hanging in my path?—

Love’s lower boughs bend with them—but, ah me!

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.

James Whitcomb Riley.