LOVE’S OLD SWEET SONG.
SINCE YESTERDAY.
THE mavis sang but yesterday
A strain that thrilled through autumn’s dearth;
He read the music of his lay
In light and leaf, and heaven and earth;
The wind-flowers by the wayside swung,
Words of the music that was sung.
In all his song the shade and sun
Of earth and heaven seemed to meet;
Its joy and sorrow were as one,
Its very sadness was but sweet.
He sang of summers yet to be;
You listened to his song with me.
The heart makes sunshine in the rain,
Or winter in the midst of May;
And though the mavis sings again
His self-same song of yesterday,
I find no gladness in his tone:
To-day I listen here alone.
And—even our sunniest moment takes
Such shadows of the bliss we knew—
To-day his throbbing song awakes
But wistful, haunting thoughts of you;
Its very sweetness is but sad:
You gave it all the joy it had.
A. St. J. Adcock.
AN AWAKENING.
LOVE had forgotten and gone to sleep;
Love had forgotten the present and past.
I was so glad when he ceased to weep;
“Now he is quiet,” I whispered, “at last.”
What sent you here on that night of all nights,
Breaking his slumber, dreamless and deep,
Just as I whispered below my breath,
“Love has forgotten and gone to sleep”?
Anne Reeve Aldrich.
LOVE, THE DESTROYER.
LOVE is a Fire;
Nor Shame nor Pride can well withstand Desire.
“For what are they,” we cry, “that they should dare
To keep, O Love, the haughty look they wear?
Nay, burn the victims, O thou sacred Fire,
That with their death thou mayst but flame the higher.
Let them feel once the fierceness of thy breath,
And make thee still more beauteous with their death.”
Love is a Fire;
But ah, how short-lived is the flame Desire!
Love, having burnt whatever once we cherished,
And blackened all things else, itself hath perished.
And now alone in gathering night we stand,
Ashes and ruin stretch on either hand;
Yet while we mourn, our sad hearts whisper low:
“We served the mightiest God that man can know.”
SWEETHEART, SIGH NO MORE.
IT was with doubt and trembling
I whispered in her ear.
Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough,
That all the world may hear—
Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
Upon the wayside tree,
How fair she is, how true she is,
How dear she is to me—
Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Sing it, sing it, tawny throat,
And through the summer long
The winds among the clover-tops,
And brooks, for all their silvery stops,
Shall envy you the song—
Sweetheart, sigh no more!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
THE FADED VIOLET.
WHAT thought is folded in thy leaves!
What tender thought, what speechless pain!
I hold thy faded lips to mine,
Thou darling of the April rain!
I hold thy faded lips to mine,
Though scent and azure tint are fled—
O dry, mute lips! ye are the type
Of something in me cold and dead:
Of something wilted like thy leaves;
Of fragrance flown, of beauty dim;
Yet for the love of those white hands
That found thee by a river’s brim—
That found thee when thy dewy mouth
Was purpled as with stains of wine—
For love of her who love forgot,
I hold thy faded lips to mine.
That thou shouldst live when I am dead,
When hate is dead, for me, and wrong,
For this I use my subtlest art,
For this I fold thee in my song.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
SONG.
NAY! if thou must depart, thou shalt depart;
But why so soon, oh, heart-blood of my heart!
Go then! Yet, going, turn and stay thy feet,
That I may once more see that face so sweet.
Once more—if never more; for swift days go
As hastening waters from their fountains flow;
And whether yet again shall meeting be
Who knows? Who knows? Ah! turn once more to me!
Sir Edwin Arnold.
CALAIS SANDS.
A THOUSAND knights have rein’d their steeds
To watch this line of sand hills run,
Along the never-silent strait,
To Calais, glittering in the sun.
To look tow’rd Ardres’ Golden Field
Across the wide aerial plain,
Which glows as if the Middle Age
Were gorgeous upon earth again.
Oh, that to share this famous scene,
I saw, upon the open sand,
Thy lovely presence at my side,
Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand!
How exquisite thy voice would come,
My darling, on this lonely air!
How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze
Shake loose some band of soft brown hair!
Yet now my glance but once hath roved
O’er Calais and its famous plain;
To England’s cliffs my gaze is turn’d,
On the blue strait mine eyes I strain.
Thou comest! Yes! the vessel’s cloud
Hangs dark upon the rolling sea.
Oh, that yon sea-bird’s wings were mine,
To win one instant’s glimpse of thee!
I must not spring to grasp thy hand,
To woo thy smile, to seek thine eye;
But I may stand far off, and gaze,
And watch thee pass unconscious by,
And spell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts,
Mixt with the idlers on the pier.—
Ah, might I always rest unseen,
So I might have thee always near!
To-morrow hurry through the fields
Of Flanders to the storied Rhine!
To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close
Beneath one roof, my queen! with mine.
Matthew Arnold.
PHANTOMS.
MY days are full of pleasant memories
Of all those women sweet
Whom I have known! How tenderly their eyes
Flash thro’ the days—too fleet!—
Which long ago went by with sun and rain,
Flowers, or the winter snow;
And still thro’ memory’s palace-halls are fain
In rustling robes to go!
Or wed, or widow’d, or with milkless breasts,
Around those women stand,
Like mists that linger on the mountain crests
Rear’d in a phantom land;
And love is in their mien and in their look,
And from their lips a stream
Of tender words flows, smooth as any brook,
And softer than a dream:
And one by one, holding my hands, they say
Things of the years agone;
And each head will a little turn away,
And each one still sigh on,
Because they think such meagre joy we had;
For love was little bold,
And youth had store, and chances to be glad,
And squander’d so his gold.
Blue eyes, and gray, and blacker than the sloe,
And dusk and golden hair,
And lips that broke in kisses long ago,
Like sun-kiss’d flowers are there;
And warm fireside, and sunny orchard wall,
And river-brink and bower,
And wood and hill, and morning and day-fall,
And every place and hour!
And each on each a white unclouded brow
Still as a sister bends,
As they would say, “Love makes us kindred now,
Who sometime were his friends.”
Thomas Ashe.
THE GUEST.
LIGHTS Love, the timorous bird, to dwell,
While summer smiles, a guest with you?
Be wise betimes and use him well,
And he will stay in winter too:
For you can have no sweeter thing
Within the heart’s warm nest to sing.
The blue-plumed swallows fly away,
Ere autumn gilds a leaf; and then
Have wit to find another day
The little clay-built house again:
He will not know, a second spring,
His last year’s nest, if Love take wing.
Thomas Ashe.
THE SECRET.
From the French of Félix Arvers.
MY life its secret and its mystery has,
A love eternal in a moment born;
There is no hope to help my evil case,
And she knows naught who makes me thus forlorn.
And I unmark’d shall ever by her pass
Aye at her side, and yet for aye alone;
And I shall waste my bitter days, alas!
And never dare to claim my love my own!
And she whom God has made so sweet and dear,
Will go her way, distraught, and never hear
This murmur round her of my love and pain;
To austere duty true, will go her way,
And read these verses full of her, and say,
“Who is this woman that he sings of then?”
Thomas Ashe.
IF LOVE COULD LAST!
IF Love could last, if Love could last,
The Future be as was the Past,
Nor faith and fondness ever know
The chill of dwindling afterglow,
Oh, then we should not have to long
For cuckoo’s call and throstle’s song,
But every season then would ring
With rapturous voices of the spring.
In budding brake and grassy glade
The primrose then would never fade,
The windflower flag, the bluebell haze
Faint from the winding woodland ways,
But vernal hopes chase wintry fears,
And happy smiles and happier tears
Be like the sun and clouds at play,—
If Love could last!
If Love could last, the rose would then
Not bloom but once, to fade again.
June to the lily would not give
A life less fair than fugitive,
But flower and leaf and lawn renew
Their freshness nightly with the dew.
In forest dingles, dim and deep,
Where curtained noonday lies asleep,
The faithful ringdove ne’er would cease
Its anthem of abiding peace.
All the year round we then should stray
Through fragrance of the new-mown hay,
Or sit and ponder old-world rhymes
Under the leaves of scented limes.
Careless of time, we should not fear
The footsteps of the fleeting year,
Or, did the long warm days depart,
’Twould still be summer in our heart,—
Did Love but last!
Did Love but last, no shade of grief
For fading flower, for falling leaf,
For stubbles whence the piled-up wain
Hath borne away the golden grain,
Leaving a load of loss behind,
Would shock the heart and haunt the mind.
With mellow gaze we then should see
The ripe fruit shaken from the tree,
The swallows troop, the acorns fall,
The last peach redden on the wall,
The oasthouse smoke, the hopbine burn,
Knowing that all good things return
To Love that lasts!
If Love could last, who then would mind
The freezing rack, the unfeeling wind,
The curdling pool, the shivering sedge,
The empty nest in leafless hedge,
Brown dripping bents and furrows bare,
The wild geese clamouring through the air,
The huddling kine, the sodden leaves,
Lack-lustre dawns and clammy eves?
For then through twilight days morose
We should within keep warm and close,
And by the friendly fireside blaze
Talk of the ever-sacred days
When first we met, and felt how drear
Were life without the other near;
Or, too at peace with bliss to speak,
Sit hand in hand, and cheek to cheek,—
If Love could last!
Yet Love Can Last.
Yet Love can last, yes, Love can last,
The Future be as was the Past,
And faith and fondness never know
The chill of dwindling afterglow,
If to familiar hearth there cling
The virgin freshness of the spring,
And April’s music still be heard
In wooing voice and winning word.
If when autumnal shadows streak
The furrowed brow, the wrinkled cheek,
Devotion, deepening to the close,
Like fruit that ripens, tenderer grows;
If, though the leaves of youth and hope
Lie thick on life’s declining slope,
The fond heart, faithful to the last,
Lingers in love-drifts of the past;
If, with the gravely shortening days,
Faith trims the lamp, Faith feeds the blaze,
And Reverence, robed in wintry white,
Sheds fragrance like a summer night,—
Then Love can last!
Alfred Austin.
A JOURNEY.
THE same green hill, the same blue sea,—
Yet, love, thou art no more to me!
The same long reach of yellow sand,—
Where is the touch of thy soft hand?
The same wide open arch of sky,—
But, sweetheart, thou no more art nigh!
God love thee and God keep thee strong:
I breathe that pure prayer through my song!
I send my soul across the waste
To seek and find thy soul in haste!
Across the inland woods and glades,
And through the leaf-laced checkered shades,
My spirit passes, seeking thee;
No more I tarry by the sea.
For where thou art am I for ever;
Mere space and time divide us never.
George Barlow.
IF ONLY THOU ART TRUE.
IF only a single Rose is left,
Why should the summer pine?
A blade of grass in a rocky cleft;
A single star to shine.
—Why should I sorrow if all be lost,
If only thou art mine?
If only a single Bluebell gleams
Bright on the barren heath,
Still of that flower the summer dreams,
Not of his August wreath.
—Why should I sorrow if thou art mine,
Love, beyond change and death?
If only once on a wintry day
The sun shines forth in the blue,
He gladdens the groves till they laugh as in May
And dream of the touch of the dew.
—Why should I sorrow if all be false,
If only thou art true?
George Barlow.
THE ECSTASY OF THE HAIR.
I’D send a troop of kisses to entangle
And lose themselves in labyrinths of hair,—
Thy deep dark night of hair with stars to spangle,
And each, a firefly’s tiny lamp, to dangle
Amid the tresses of that forest fair.
A perfume seems to blossom into air;
The ecstasy that hangs about the tresses,
Their blush, their overflow, their breath, their bloom;
A wind that gently lifts them and caresses,
And wings itself and floats about the room;
The beauty that the flame of youth expresses,
A tender fire, too tender to consume,
Which, seizing all my soul, pervades, possesses,
And mingleth in a subtly sweet perfume.
George Barlow.
THE NIGHT WATCHES.
COME, oh, come to me, voice or look, or spirit or dream, but, oh, come now;
All these faces that crowd so thick are pale and cold and dead—Come thou,
Scatter them back to the ivory gate and be alone and rule the night.
Surely all worlds are nothing to Love, for Love to flash thro’ the night and come;
Hither and thither he flies at will, with thee he dwelleth—there is his home.
Come, O Love, with a voice, a message; haste, O Love, on thy wings of light.
Love, I am calling thee, Love, I am calling; dost thou not hear my crying, sweet?
Does not the live air throb with the pain of my beating heart, till thy heart beat?—
Surely momently thou wilt be here, surely, O sweet Love, momently.
No, my voice would be all too faint, too faint, when it reached Love’s ear, tho’ the night is still,
Fainter ever and fainter grown o’er hill and valley and valley and hill,
There where thou liest quietly sleeping, and Love keeps watch as the dreams flit by.
Ah, my thought so subtle and swift, can it not fly till it reach thy brain,
And whisper there some faint regret for a weary watch and a distant pain?—
Not too loud, to awake thy slumber; not too tender, to make thee weep;
Just so much for thy head to turn on the pillow so, and understand
Dimly, that a soft caress has come long leagues from a weary land,
Turn and half remember and smile, and send a kiss on the wings of sleep.
H. C. Beeching.
IN A ROSE GARDEN.
A HUNDRED years from now, dear heart,
We will not care at all.
It will not matter then a whit,
The honey or the gall.
The summer days that we have known
Will all forgotten be and flown;
The garden will be overgrown
Where now the roses fall.
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We will not mind the pain.
The throbbing crimson tide of life
Will not have left a stain.
The song we sing together, dear,
The dream we dream together here,
Will mean no more than means a tear
Amid a summer rain.
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
The grief will all be o’er;
The sea of care will surge in vain
Upon a careless shore.
These glasses we turn down to-day
Here at the parting of the way:
We will be wineless then as they,
And will not mind it more.
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We’ll neither know nor care
What came of all life’s bitterness
Or followed love’s despair.
Then fill the glasses up again
And kiss me through the rose-leaf rain;
We’ll build one castle more in Spain,
And dream one more dream there.
John Bennett.
I CHARGE YOU, O WINDS OF THE WEST.
I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
That ye blow o’er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.
I charge you, O dews of the dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my love, with the sound of one weeping forlorn.
I charge you, O birds of the air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.
I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels and droops with despair.
O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.
Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish the flames of love’s fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it and breaks its desire.
I rise like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.
The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.
The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne’er soothed into sleep.
The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
But love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.
Mathilde Blind.
SONG.
THOU walkest with me as the spirit-light
Of the hushed moon, high o’er a snowy hill,
Walks with the houseless traveller all the night,
When trees are tongueless and when mute the rill.
Moon of my soul, O phantom of delight,
Thou walkest with me still.
The vestal flame of quenchless memory burns
In my soul’s sanctuary. Yea, still for thee
My bitter heart hath yearned, as moonward yearns
Each separate wave-pulse of the clamorous sea:
My moon of love, to whom for ever turns
That life that aches through me.
Mathilde Blind.
CÆLI.
IF stars were really watching eyes
Of angel armies in the skies,
I should forget all watchers there,
And only for your glances care.
And if your eyes were really stars,
With leagues that none can mete for bars
To keep me from their longed-for day,
I could not feel more far away.
F. W. Bourdillon.
LOVE IN THE HEART.
LOVE in the heart is as a nightingale
That sings in a green wood;
And none can pass unheeding there, nor fail
Of impulses of good.
Though cruel brief be Love’s bright hour of song,
Yet let him sing his fill!
For other hearts the echoes shall prolong
When Love’s own voice is still.
F. W. Bourdillon.
I WILL NOT LET THEE GO.
I will not let thee go.
Ends all our month-long love in this?
Can it be summed up so,
Quit in a single kiss?
I will not let thee go.
I will not let thee go.
If thy words’ breath could scare thy deeds,
As the soft south can blow
And toss the feathered seeds,
Then might I let thee go.
I will not let thee go.
Had not the great sun seen, I might;
Or were he reckoned slow
To bring the false to light,
Then might I let thee go.
I will not let thee go.
The stars that crowd the summer skies
Have watched us so below
With all their million eyes,
I dare not let thee go.
I will not let thee go.
Have we not chid the changeful moon,
Now rising late, and now
Because she set too soon,
And shall I let thee go?
I will not let thee go.
Have not the young flowers been content,
Plucked ere their buds could blow,
To seal our sacrament?
I cannot let thee go.
I will not let thee go.
I hold thee by too many bands:
Thou sayest farewell, and lo!
I have thee by the hands,
And will not let thee go.
Robert Bridges.
LONG ARE THE HOURS.
LONG are the hours the sun is above,
But when evening comes I go home to my love.
I’m away the daylight hours and more,
Yet she comes not down to open the door.
She does not meet me upon the stair,—
She sits in my chamber and waits for me there.
As I enter the room, she does not move:
I always walk straight up to my love;
And she lets me take my wonted place
At her side, and gaze in her dear, dead face.
There as I sit, from her head thrown back
Her hair falls straight in a shadow black.
Aching and hot as my tired eyes be,
She is all that I wish to see.
And in my wearied and toil-dinned ear,
She says all things that I wish to hear.
Dusky and duskier grows the room,
Yet I see her best in the darker gloom.
When the winter eves are early and cold,
The firelight hours are a dream of gold.
And so I sit here night by night,
In rest and enjoyment of love’s delight.
But a knock on the door, a step on the stair
Will startle, alas, my love from her chair.
If a stranger comes, she will not stay:
At the first alarm she is off and away.
And he wonders, my guest, usurping her throne,
That I sit so much by myself alone.
Robert Bridges.