The strawberry tree and the crimson thorn,
And Fanny's myrtle and William's vine,
And honey of bountiful jessamine,
Are gone from the homestead where I was born.
I gaze from my Grandfather's terrace wall,
And then I bethink me how once I stept
Through rooms where my Mother had blest me,
and wept
To yield them to strangers, and part with them all.
My Father, like Matthew the publican, ceased
Full early from hoarding with stainless mind,
To Torrington only and home inclined,
Where brotherhood, cousinhood, graced his feast.
I meet his remembrance in market lane,
'Neath town-hall pillars and churchyard limes,
In streets where he tried a thousand times
To chasten anger and soften pain.
Ah I would there were some one that I could aid,
Though lacking the simpleness, lacking the worth,
Yet wanted and trusted by right of birth,
Some townfellow stripling, some Torrington maid.
Oh pitiful waste! oh stubborn neglect!
Oh pieties smothered for thirty years!
Oh gleanings of kindness in dreams and tears!
Oh drift cast up from a manhood wrecked!
There's one merry maiden hath carelessly crossed
The threshold I dread, and she never discerns
In keepsakes she thanks me for, lessons she learns,
A sign of the grace that I squandered and lost.
My birthplace to Meg is but window and stone,
My knowledge a wilderness where she can stray,
To keep what she gathers or throw it away;
So Meg lets me laugh with her, mourning alone.
A FELLOW PASSENGER UNKNOWN
Maiden, hastening to be wise,
Maiden, reading with a rage,
Envy fluttereth round the page
Whereupon thy downward eyes
Rove and rest, and melt maybe—
Virgin eyes one may not see,
Gathering as the bee
Takes from cherry tree;
As the robin's bill
Frets the window sill,
Maiden, bird, and bee,
Three from me half hid,
Doing what we did
When our minds were free.
Those romantic pages wist
What romance is in the look.
Oh, that I could be so bold,
So romantic as to bold
Half an hour the pensive wrist,
And the burden of the book.
NUREMBERG CEMETERY
Outside quaint Albert Durer's town,
Where Freedom set her stony crown,
Whereof the gables red and brown
Curve over peaceful forts that screen
Spring bloom and garden lanes between
The scarp and counter-scarp. Her feet
One highday of Saint Paraclete
Were led along the dolorous street
By stepping stones towards love and heaven
And pauses of the soul twice seven.
Beneath the flowerless trees, where May,
Proud of her orchards' fine array,
Abates her claim and holds no sway,
Past iron tombs, the useless shields
Of cousins slain in Elsass fields,
The girl, with fair neck meekly bowed.
Mores bravely through a sauntering crowd,
Hastening, as she was bid, to breathe
Above the breathless, and enwreathe,
With pansies earned by spinster thrift,
And lillybells, a wooer's gift,
A stone which glimmers in the shade
Of yonder silent colonnade,
Over against the slates that hold
Marie in lines of slender gold,
A token wrought by fictive fingers,
A garland, last year's offering, lingers,
Hung out of reach, and facing north.
And lo! thereout a wren flies forth,
And Gertrude, straining on toetips,
Just touches with her prayerful lips
The warm home which a bird unskilled
In grief and hope knows how to build.
The maid can mourn, but not the wren.
Birds die, death's shade belongs to men.
1877.
MORTAL THING NOT WHOLLY CLAY
J'aurai passé sur la terre,
N'ayant rien aimé que l'amour.
Mortal thing not wholly clay,
Mellowing only to decay,
Speak, for airs of spring unfold
Wistful sorrows long untold.
Under a poplar turning green,
Say for age that seems so bold,
Oh, the saddest words to say,
"This might have been."
Twenty, thirty years ago—
Woe, woe, the seasons flow—
Beatings of a zephyr's plume
Might have broken down the doom.
Gossamer scruples fell between
Thee and this that might have been;
Now the clinging cobwebs grow;
Ah! the saddest loss is this,
A good maid's kiss.
Soon, full soon, they will be here,
Twisting withies for the bier;
Under a heathen yew-tree's shade
Will a wasted heart be laid—
Heart that never dared be dear.
Leave it so, to lie unblest,
Priest of love, just half confessed.