“When love is mine,” said I, “I’ll make a song
In praise of love that maketh life so sweet;
One worthy such a grand and noble theme—
Worthy to lay at my belovèd’s feet.
“Pure, perfect pearls of poesy I’ll string
On Music’s silken thread, so rhythmic-sweet
That those who hear shall feel as though each word
Were but an echo of my heart’s warm beat.”
Now love is mine; but where my boasted song?
My heart is full—too full, ah me! for words;
And yet methinks my new-found joy has lent
Fresh rapture to the voices of the birds.
And I am dumb; the world will never hear
The music filling all this life of mine.
Oh! love is too sublime a theme for me;
I can but kneel in silence at love’s shrine.
IN AN OLD CHURCHYARD
In one of England’s sweetest spots,
A little old grey church I found;
Around it lies—dear restful ground!
God’s garden with its sacred plots.
With myriad arms the ivy holds
Its time-worn walls in close embrace:
So Memory sometimes keeps a face
Half-veiled in tender misty folds.
With sleepy twitter and with song
The tower, bird-haunted, is alive;
In leafy seas they dip and dive,
Those tiny warblers all day long.
Like sentinels grown hoar with age,
The crumbling headstones guard the graves
Which softly swell—green voiceless waves
That will not break though tempests rage.
“Concerning them that are asleep”
In this sweet hamlet of the dead,
In broken sentences I read
The record those old tablets keep;