Nay, do not ask me, Sweet, if I have loved before,
Or if, mayhap, in other years to be,
A younger, fairer face than thine I know,
I'll love her more than thee.
What should it matter if I've loved before,
So that I love thee now, and love thee best?
What matters it that I should love again
If, first, the daisy-buds blow o'er thy breast?
Love has the waywardness of strange caprice,
One can not chain it to a recreant heart,
Nor, when around the soul its tendrils twine,
Can will the clinging, silken bonds to part.
It is enough, I hold thee prisoned in my arms,
And drink the dewy fragrance of thy breath;
And earth, and heaven, and hades, are forgot,
And love holds carnival, and laughs at death.
Then do not ask me, Sweet, if I have loved before,
Or if some day my heart might turn from thee;
In this brief hour, thou hast my soul of love,
And thou are Is, and Was, and May be—all to me.
A PICTURE.
A little maid, with sweet brown eyes,
Upraised to mine in sad surprise;
I held two tiny hands in mine,
I kissed the little maid farewell.
Her cheeks to deeper crimson flushed,
The sweet, shy glances downward fell;
From rosy lips came—ah! so low—
"I love you, do not go!"
I see it through the lapse of years—
This picture, ofttimes blurred with tears.
No tiny hands in mine are held,
No sweet brown eyes my pulses wake—
Only in memory a voice
E'er bids me stay for love's sweet sake.