Clouds that are racing above, And winds and lights and shadows that Gone! cannot be still, GONE. Gone, till the end of the year, All running on one way to the home of Gone, and the light gone with her, and my love, You are all running on, and I stand on the slope of the hill, And the winds are up in the morning! Follow, follow the chase! left me in shadow here! Taken the stars from the night and the sun from the day! Gone, and a cloud in my heart, and a storm in the air! And my thoughts are as quick and as Flown to the east or the west, flitted I quick, ever on, on, on. know not where ! O lights, are you flying over her sweet Down in the south is a flash and a groan : she is there! she is there! little face? And my heart is there before you are come, and gone, WINTER. When the winds are up in the morning! The frost is here, Follow them down the slope! And I follow them down to the window pane of my dear, And fuel is dear, And woods are sear, And fires burn clear, And frost is here And it brightens and darkens and And has bitten the heel of the going year. AT THE WINDOW. Vine, vine and eglantine, Trail and twine and clasp and kiss, Vine, vine and eglantine, Cannot a flower, a flower, be mine? Drop me a flower, a flower, to kiss, All of flowers, a flower, a flower, You roll up away from the light The blue wood-louse, and the plump dor mouse, And the bees are stilled, and the flies are kill'd, And you bite far into the heart of the house, But not into mine. Bite, frost, bite! The woods are all the searer, You have bitten into the heart of the earth, SPRING. Birds' love and birds' song And you with gold for hair! Two little hands that meet, Claspt on her seal, my sweet! The mist and the rain, the mist and the Must I take you and break you, rain ! Is it ay or no? is it ay or no? Two little hands that meet? Faint heart never won- 'A week hence, a week hence.' Ah, the long delay.' "Wait a little, wait a little, You shall fix a day.' 'To-morrow, love, to-morrow And that's an age away.' Blaze upon her window, sun, And honour all the day. MARRIAGE MORNING. Light, so low upon earth, You send a flash to the sun. Here is the golden close of love, All my wooing is done. Oh, the woods and the meadows, Woods where we hid from the wet, Stiles where we stay'd to be kind, Meadows in which we met ! Light, so low in the vale You flash and lighten afar, For this is the golden morning of love, And you are his morning star. Flash, I am coming, I come, By meadow and stile and wood, Oh, lighten into my eyes and my heart, For a love that never tires? O heart, are you great enough for love? I have heard of thorns and briers. Over the thorns and briers, Over the meadows and stiles, Over the world to the end of it Flash for a million miles. Than that the victor Hours should scorn The long result of love, and boast, 'Behold the man that loved and lost, But all he was is overworn.' II. Old Yew, which graspest at the stones And in the dusk of thee, the clock O not for thee the glow, the bloom, Who changest not in any gale, Nor branding summer suns avail To touch thy thousand years of gloom : And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee. III. O Sorrow, cruel fellowship, O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip? 'The stars,' she whispers, 'blindly run; A web is wov'n across the sky; From out waste places comes a cry, And murmurs from the dying sun : 'And all the phantom, Nature, standsWith all the music in her tone, A hollow echo of my own,A hollow form with empty hands.' And shall I take a thing so blind, Embrace her as my natural good; Or crush her, like a vice of blood, Upon the threshold of the mind? IV. To Sleep I give my powers away; My will is bondsman to the dark; O heart, how fares it with thee now, That thou should'st fail from thy desire, Who scarcely darest to inquire, 'What is it makes me beat so low?' Something it is which thou hast lost, Some pleasure from thine early years. tears, That grief hath shaken into frost! All night below the darken'd eyes; 'Thou shalt not be the fool of loss. V. I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise, Like dull narcotics, numbing pain. In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold; But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more. VI. One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' That Loss is common to the race'And common is the commonplace, And vacant chaff well meant for grain. |