IV
Sometimes she lures me with a song;
Sometimes she guides me with a laugh;
Her white hand is a magic staff,
Her look a spell to lead me long:
Though she be weak and I be strong,
She needs but shake her happy hair,
But glance her eyes, and, right or wrong,
My soul must follow—anywhere
She wills—far from the world’s loud throng.
V
Sometimes I think that she must be
No part of earth, but merely this—
The fair, elusive thing we miss
In Nature, that we dream we see
Yet never see: that goldenly
Beckons; that, limbed with rose and pearl,
The Greek made a divinity:—
A nymph, a god, a glimmering girl,
That haunts the forest’s mystery.
THE LOST GARDEN
Roses, brier on brier,
Like a hedge of fire,
Walled it from the world and rolled
Crimson round it; manifold
Blossoms, ’mid which once of old
Walked my Heart’s Desire.
There the golden Hours
Dwelt; and ’mid the bowers
Beauty wandered like a maid;
And the Dreams that never fade
Sat within its haunted shade
Gazing at the flowers.
There the winds that vary
Melody and marry
Perfume unto perfume, went,
Whispering to the buds, that bent,
Messages whose wonderment
Made them sweet to carry.
There the waters hoary
Murmured many a story
To the leaves that leaned above,
Listening to their tales of love,
While the happiness thereof
Flushed their green with glory.
There the sunset’s shimmer
’Mid the bowers,—dimmer
Than the woods where Fable dwells,
And Romance her legends tells,—
Wrought dim dreams and dimmer spells,
Filled with golden glimmer.