The bravest ’tis should win the prize,
And yet I dare not risk her scorn,
And who but knows the reddest rose
May hide the very sharpest thorn?
Yet who can tell but she might yield
Its sweetness up in one long kiss?
So I, who dare not risk her scorn,
Can risk still less to lose such bliss.
And when she feels my parchèd lips
Athirst with long long years of drouth,
She will forgive me, that I sought
That dewy chalice, her sweet mouth.
WATER LILIES
A fleet of fairy vessels
All freighted with pure gold,
The lilies lie at anchor
On the lake’s breast, calm and cold.
Their soft, white sails, seem waiting
The zephyr’s first faint kiss
To waft them to another world,
More bright and fair than this.
Methinks, it were no marvel,
If I should find, one day,
They’d drifted from their moorings,
And in silence sailed away.
THE SENTINEL
“Tick! tick! tick!” goes the old clock in the hall;
The merry hours, the mournful hours
Alike he counts them all
As he stands erect at his post,
Time’s solemn Sentinel.
All that he hath to say he saith,
And on, with never a pause for breath,
He hurries us nearer the day of death.
Though his warning voice is ofttimes drowned
In the whirr, as the wheels of life run round,
Yet, whether or no we hear the sound,—