I
Outside her garden. He waits musing:
Herein the dearness of her is;
The thirty perfect days of June
Made one, in maiden loveliness
Were not more sweet to clasp and kiss,
With love not more in tune.
Ah me! I think she is too true,
Too spiritual for life’s rough way:
So say her eyes,—her soul looks through,—
Two bluet blossoms, watchet-blue,
Are not more pure than they.
So kind, so beautiful is she,
So soft and white, so fond and fair,
Sometimes my heart fears she may be
Not long for Earth, and secretly
Sweet sister to the air.
II
Dusk deepens. A whippoorwill calls.
The whippoorwills are calling where
The golden west is graying;
“’Tis time,” they say, “to meet him there—
Why are you still delaying?
“He waits you where the old beech throws
Its gnarly shadow over
Wood violet and the bramble rose,
Frail lady-fern and clover.
“Where elder and the sumac peep
Above your garden’s paling,
Whereon, at noon, the lizards sleep,
Like lichen on the railing.