Vine tendrils drooping in the mid-day sun
Take me to Greece, ere Sappho sang those lays,
Whose echoes, falling down this length of days,
Trance us with beauty, sweet and halcyon;
Satyrs, green-garlanded, skip madly on
Through woody wilds, loud shouts of ribald praise
Mingle with merry laughter, and amaze
The peaceful shepherds, who, affrighted, run;
Fair dryads swell the riot-filling song
From every tree trunk, and from each pure spring
Sweet naiad voices rise with silvery ring
To welcome him who leads the dancing throng,
Old Bacchus! reeling ’neath the weight of wine,
Chanting a stave, half drunken, half divine.
LOVE-LAND.
Ah! Jenny! though life is not over,
Yet the sweetness of living is past;
No longer we walk through the clover
And watch the white clouds sailing fast;
For a darkness has newly arisen
To spread and to spoil our fair sky,
All our days must be spent in a prison
And the black cloud shall never pass by.
Ah! Jenny! though bright the scales glitter,
In the midst of the coil lurks a fang,
The fruit of the almond is bitter
Though the blossoms are fair while they hang;
The rose has a canker within it,
And some day the lark will not sing,
The year that flew by as a minute
Shall bear heavy on Love’s broken wing.
Ah! Jenny! our play-book lies broken
Behind us;—before is the page
Hermetic;—and so for a token
To charm away grief in our age
Remember the words of Creation,
Our “Let there be Love,” when Love’s fire
Through our lips like a sacred libation
Drenched our souls with the wine of desire.
Ah! Jenny! we journeyed together
Life’s road for a year and a day,
Bright summer has been all our weather,
Fair blossoms have strewn all our way;
And shall we now part at the corner
Of the cross-roads and meet nevermore,
Because the world leers like a scorner
And mocks when we pass by its door?
Ah! Jenny! the hand that I gave you
That night when I promised to keep
Your heart—lo! I stretch out to save you
And to save my own soul from Hell’s deep;
Let the world say its worst;—we shall never
Hear its voice or see aught of its gloom,
For in Love-land the birds sing forever
And the roses are always in bloom.