II. THE PRUDENT LOVER

I dreamed a song of a wild, wild love

And purposed to follow her flying hair,

Singing my music, through vale and grove,

Till dusk met the hills—and I clasped her there.

But—mumbling ancient I have become!—

I sang two staves, and then gave o’er;

And carried my song with prudence home;

And nailed it as motto above my door.

Now, the angels in heaven will crown me with bays;

And give me a golden trumpet to blow

When at last I die, full of virtuous days ...

But my wild, wild love—will she ever know?

Fronting a Dear Child and an Infamy

You sat; and watched, with dusk-on-the-mountain eyes,

The marching river of the beer go by,

Alert in vain for a band-crash of surprise.

I also! Dawn, that in respectful way

Entered a-liveried, could no lightnings rouse

For which I watched; the calling-card of day

Flushed with no guilt your Hebridean brows.

Wherefore the Infamy and I went down

Into a street of windows high and blind.

His face, his tongue, his words, his soul, were brown.

But from a window lofty and left behind,

Like a silver trumpet over the gutter-dirt,

You waved!—(I know not what; perhaps a shirt.)