THE TRYST
At dusk there fell a shower:
The leaves were dripping yet:
Each fern and rain-weighed flower
Around was gleaming wet,
When, through the evening glower,
His feet towards her were set.
The dust’s damp odor sifted
Around him, cool with rain,
Mixed with the musk that drifted
From woodland and from plain,
Where white her garden lifted
Its pickets down the lane.
And there she stood! ’mid scattered
Clove-pink and pea and whorl
Of honeysuckle,—flattered
To sweetness wild,—a girl,
O’er whom the clouds hung shattered
In moonlit peaks of pearl.
She made the night completer
For him; and earth and air,
In that small spot, far sweeter
Than heaven or anywhere.—
Swift were his lips to greet her,
Her lips love lifted there.
GYPSYING
Your heart ’s a-tune with April and mine a-tune with June,
So let us go a-roving beneath the summer moon.
Oh, was it in the sunlight, or was it in the rain,
We met among the blossoms within the locust lane?
All that I can remember ’s the bird that sang aboon,
And with its music in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon.
A love-word of the wind, dear, of which we ’ll read the rune,
While we two go a-roving beneath the summer moon.
A love-word of the water we ’ll often stop to hear—
The echoed words and whispers of our own hearts, my dear.
And all our paths shall blossom with wild-rose sweets that swoon,
And with their fragrance in our hearts we ’ll rove beneath the moon.
It will not be forever; yet merry goes the tune
While we two still are rovers beneath the summer moon.
A cabin, in the clearing, of flickering firelight,
When old-time lanes we strolled in the winter snows make white:
Where we can dream together above the logs and croon
The songs we sang when roving beneath the summer moon.