LOVE
Deep in the moving depths
Of yellow wine,
I swore I’d drown your face,
O love of mine;
All clad in yellow hue,
So fair to see,
You crouched within my cup
And laughed at me.
Twice o’er a learned page
I turned and tossed,
For would I not forget
The love I lost.
All stern and robed in gloom,
You read it too,
I could not see the words—
Saw only you.
Within the hungry chase
I thought to kill
You, love, who haunted thus
Without my will,
But in the gentle gaze
Of fawn and deer,
Your eyes disarmed my hand,
And shook my spear.
Beneath a maid’s dark lash
I swore you’d drown,
Sink in the laughing blue—
Give in, go down:
But no! you bathèd there
Right joyously,
And from her liquid eyes
You laughed at me.
WISHES
I wish we could live as the flowers live,
To breathe and to bloom in the summer and sun;
To slumber and sway in the heart of the night,
And to die when our glory had done.
I wish we could love as the bees love,
To rest or to roam without sorrow or sigh;
With laughter, when, after the wooer had won,
Love flew with a whispered good-bye.
I wish we could die as the birds die,
To fly and to fall when our beauty was best:
No trammels of time on the years of our face;
And to leave but an empty nest.