To A. M. M.
She is so shy, this little love of mine,
So pale and pure, almost I fear to speak
The love that thrills my every pulse like wine
Yet brings no answering flush to her fair cheek.
She is so calm that Passion's stirring strain
To chanson soft and low unbidden dies;
The while her longing lover sighs in vain
For one soft love-glance from her down-dropped eyes.
A lily she that from its garden bed,
Into the golden sunshine glad and sweet
Lifts to far sapphire skies its radiant head,
Unheedful of the base weeds at its feet.
Yet—should one loving reverently kneel
And draw the lily's close-shut leaves apart,
Perchance those waxen petals might reveal
Enshrined within, a glowing golden heart.
Loveless
As some poor starveling at a palace gate
Sees curtained gleams from banquet-litten halls,
Hears song out-ringing from the festal walls,
Scents viands that shall princely palates sate,
Yet in the outer gloom may only wait,
Crouched in the cold, thrice-thankful for some least
Mean morsel flung him from the plenteous feast—
Poor bondman to the ball and chain of Fate!
So, lonely at Love's outer gate I stand
And glimpse the brightness and the bliss within,
Where love-lit smiles transmute the dark to day—
I wait without—I may not enter in;
Long, wistfully, I gaze—then void of hand
And starved of spirit, sadly turn away.