On my heart you beat so gaily,
Where her heart has beaten daily;
She should think of us at night,
When we two count hours in flight.
Quaint repeater, friend diurnal
(Like a truthful, faithful journal),
Make the minutes pass away,
Speed the night, and hasten day.
Do you keep the hours correctly?
Hands that move so circumspectly
Ought, punctiliously, to show
When a lad to lass should go.
Quaint repeater, faster, faster,
If you would avert disaster;
Make the long days swiftly fly,
Greeting hour is surely nigh.
How can I exist in anguish,
When for her I fret and languish?
Quaint repeater, may I rest,
Where you lay, upon her breast!
THE MUSIC OF A DREAM
A song lies buried in my soul,
Its melody is silent there,
The glory of it I would roll
In ecstasy, if thou would’st care
To hear its sweet enchanting strain,
In some deep garden where the hills
Would echo its subdued refrain,
Where fragrance every cloister fills,
Where flowery carpets spread, for thee,
Of velvet petals of the rose,
Is where the song will flow from me
Into the heart thy lover knows.
My precious love, my one delight,
Thou art more fair than that first dawn
Which made the new-born world so bright;
When primal dews spread o’er the lawn
And grass held jewels in its sheath,
Where earth’s first flowers were kissed by day.
More fair, art thou, than Ceres’ wreath
For tender maidens crowned with May.
A song for thee, and thee alone,
No other ear shall know its theme;
My eastern pearl of rarest tone,
It is the music of a dream;
A dream of gushing, surging love
From never-saving, endless springs,
Down deep, as heaven is high above;
Its course, as wide as Cosmos flings
The starry gems which light the skies,
When nightingales pour out their song;
As soft as joy in lover’s eyes,
In climes, where nights of love are long.
A FLOWER
In all this world you are to me
A flower, serene, alone;
A sight kind heaven lets me see
When I am deep in misery,
And hope of joy near flown.
You, like a bloom when woods are grey,
Arresting soul and mind,
With beauty bidding me to stay,
And worship you with prayer and lay,
And ease for sorrow find.