BY one rapt day Love doth his harvest mete,
And from dream wings in memory’s light caressed
Fans calms of joy into my burning breast.
It is that day when Love bowed at thy feet,
And all the noontide in a rush of heat
Rippled with whispers of thy love confessed;
And larks afar sank down with sobs of rest,
Finding their carol heights in thee complete.
The day when, midst the well-known Sussex wood,
Stream music kissed the spirit of the wold
And sang the sun to rest, mingling its gold
With heather-bell and oak, and, rapt in moods
Of melody and shy sweet interludes,
Held our soul’s transport still with joys untold.
A. Ernest Hinshelwood.
THE DILEMMA.
NOW, by the blessed Paphian queen,
Who heaves the breast of sweet sixteen;
By every name I cut on bark
Before my morning star grew dark;
By Hymen’s torch, by Cupid’s dart,
By all that thrills the beating heart;
The bright black eye, the melting blue,—
I cannot choose between the two.
I had a vision in my dreams;—
I saw a row of twenty beams;
From every beam a rope was hung,
In every rope a lover swung;
I asked the hue of every eye
That bade each luckless lover die;
Ten shadowy lips said heavenly blue,
And ten accused the darker hue.
I asked a matron which she deemed
With fairest light of beauty beamed;
She answered, some thought both were fair,—
Give her blue eyes and golden hair.
I might have liked her judgment well,
But, as she spoke, she rung the bell,
And all her girls, nor small nor few,
Came marching in,—their eyes were blue.
I asked a maiden; back she flung
The locks that round her forehead hung,
And turned her eye, a glorious one,
Bright as a diamond in the sun,
On me, until beneath its rays
I felt as if my hair would blaze;
She liked all eyes but eyes of green;
She looked at me, what could she mean?
Ah! many lids Love lurks between,
Nor heeds the colouring of his screen;
And when his random arrows fly,
The victim falls, but knows not why.
Gaze not upon his shield of jet,
The shaft upon the string is set;
Look not beneath his azure veil,
Though every limb were cased in mail.
Well both might make a martyr break
The chain that bound him to the stake;
And both with but a single ray
Can melt our very hearts away;
And both, when balanced, hardly seem
To stir the scales, or rock the beam;
But that is dearest, all the while,
That wears for us the sweetest smile.
Oliver Wendell Holmes.