IF I WERE
If I were a raindrop, and you were a leaf,
I would burst from the cloud above you,
And lie on your breast in a rapture of rest,
And love you, love you, love you.
If I were a brown bee, and you were a rose,
I would fly to you, love, nor miss you;
I would sip and sip from your nectared lip,
And kiss you, kiss you, kiss you.
If I were a doe, dear, and you were a brook,
Ah, what would I do then, think you?
I would kneel by the bank, in the grasses dank,
And drink you, drink you, drink you.
WARNED
They stood at the garden gate.
By the lifting of a lid
She might have read her fate
In a little thing he did.
He plucked a beautiful flower;
Tore it away from its place
On the side of the blooming bower;
And held it against his face.
Drank in its beauty and bloom,
In the midst of his idle talk;
Then cast it down to the gloom
And dust of the garden walk.
Ay, trod it under his foot,
As it lay in his pathway there;
Then spurned it away with his boot,
Because it bad ceased to be fair.
Ah! the maiden might have read
The doom of her young life then;
But she looked in his eyes instead,
And thought him the king of men.