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A Dialogue At Fiesole

HE.
Halt here awhile. That mossy-cushioned seat
Is for your queenliness a natural throne;
As I am fitly couched on this low sward,
Here at your feet.

SHE.
And I, in thought, at yours:
My adoration, deepest.

HE.
Deep, so deep,
I have no thought wherewith to fathom it;
Or, shall I say, no flight of song so high,
To reach the Heaven whence you look down on me,
My star, my far-off star!

SHE.
If far, yet fixed:
No shifting planet leaving you to seek
Where now it shines.

HE.
A little light, if near,
Glows livelier than the largest orb in Heaven.

SHE.
But little lights burn quickly out, and then,
Another must be kindled. Stars gleam on,
Unreached, but unextinguished. . . . Now, the song.

HE.
Yes, yes, the song: your music to my verse.

SHE.
In this sequestered dimple of the hill,
Forgotten by the furrow, none will hear:
Only the nightingales, that misconceive
The mid-day darkness of the cypresses
For curtained night.

HE.
And they will hush to hear
A sudden singing sweeter than their own.
Delay not the enchantment, but begin.

SHE
(singing).
If you were here, if you were here,
The cattle-bells would sound more clear;
The cataracts would flash and leap
More silvery from steep to steep;
The farewell of a rosier glow
Soften the summit of the snow;
The valley take a tenderer green;
In dewy gorge and dim ravine
The loving bramble-flowers embrace
The rough thorn with a gentler grace;
The gentian open bluer eyes,
In bluer air, to bluer skies:
The frail anemone delay,
The jonquil hasten on its way,
The primrose linger past its time,
The violet prolong its prime;
And every flower that seeks the light,
On Alpine lowland, Alpine height,
Wear April's smile without its tear,
If you were here; if you were here!

If you were here, the Spring would wake
A fuller music in the brake.
The mottled misselthrush would pipe
A note more ringing, rich, and ripe;
The whitethroat peer above its nest
With brighter eye and downier breast;
The cuckoo greet the amorous year,
Chanting its joy without its jeer;
The lark betroth the earth and sky
With peals of heavenlier minstrelsy;
And every wildwood bird rejoice
On fleeter wing, with sweeter voice,
If you were here!

If you were here, I too should feel
The moisture of the Springtide steal
Along my veins, and rise and roll
Through every fibre of my soul.
In my live breast would melt the snow,
And all its channels flush and flow
With waves of life and streams of song,
Frozen and silent all too long.
A something in each wilding flower,
Something in every scented shower,
Something in flitting voice and wing,
Would drench my heart and bid me sing:
Not in this feeble halting note,
But, like the merle's exulting throat,
With carol full and carol clear,
If you were here, if you were here.

HE.
Hark! How the hills have caught the strain, and seem
Loth to surrender it, and now enclose
Its cadence in the silence of their folds.
Still as you sang, the verses had the wing
Of that which buoyed them, and your aery voice
Lifted my drooping music from the ground.
Now that you cease, there is an empty nest,
From which the full-fledged melody hath flown.

SHE.
Dare I with you contend in metaphor,
It might not be so fanciful to show
That nest, and eggs, and music, all are yours.
But modesty in poets is too rare,
To be reproved for error. Let me then
Be crowned full queen of song, albeit in sooth
I am but consort, owing my degree
To the real sceptred Sovereign at my side.
But now repay my music, and in kind.
Unfolding to my ear the youngest flower
Of song that seems to blossom all the year;
``Delay not the enchantment, but begin.''

HE
(reciting). Yet, you are here; yes, you are here.
There's not a voice that wakes the year,
In vale frequented, upland lone,
But steals some sweetness from your own.
When dream and darkness have withdrawn,
I feel you in the freshening dawn:
You fill the noonday's hushed repose;
You scent the dew of daylight's close.
The twilight whispers you are nigh;
The stars announce you in the sky.
The moon, when most alone in space,
Fills all the heavens with your face.
In darkest hour of deepest night,
I see you with the spirit's sight;
And slumber murmurs in my ear,
``Hush! she is here. Sleep! she is here.''

SHE.
Hark how you bare your secret when you sing!
Imagination's universal scope
Can swift endue this gray and shapeless world
With the designs and colour of the sky.
What want you with our fixed and lumpish forms,
You, unconditioned arbiter of air?
``Yet, you are here; yes, you are here.'' The span
Of nimble fancy leaps the interval,
And brings the distant nearer than the near.

HE.
Distance is nearer than proximity,
When distance longs, proximity doth not.

SHE.
The near is always distant to the mind
That craves for satisfaction of its end;
Nor doth the distance ever feel so far
As when the end is touched. Retard that goal,
Prolonging appetite beyond the feast
That feeds anticipation.

HE.
Specious foil!
That parries every stroke before 'tis made.
Yet surfeit's self doth not more surely cloy
Than endless fasting.

SHE.
Still a swifter cure
Waits on too little than attends too much.
While disappointment merely woundeth Hope,
The deadly blow by disenchantment dealt
Strikes at the heart of Faith. O happy you,
The favourites of Fancy, who replace
Illusion with illusion, and conceive
Fresh cradles in the dark womb of the grave.
While we, prosaic victims, prove that time
Kills love while leaving loveless life alive,
You still, divinely duped, sing deathless love,
And with your wizard music, once again,
Make Winter Spring. Yet surely you forgive
That I have too much pity for the flowers
Children and poets cull to fling away,
To be an April nosegay.

HE.
How you swell
The common chorus! Women, who are wronged
So roughly by men's undiscerning word,
As though one pattern served to show them all,
Should be more just to poets. These, in truth,
Diverge from one another nowise less
Than ``women,'' vaguely labelled: children some,
With childish voice and nature, lyric bards,
Weaklings that on life's threshold sweetly wail,
But never from that silvery treble pass
Into the note and chant of manliness.
Their love is like their verse, a frail desire,
A fluttering fountain falling feebly back
Into its shallow origin. Next there are
The poets of contention, wrestlers born,
Who challenge iron Circumstance, and fail:
Generous and strong, withal not strong enough,
Since lacking sinewy wisdom, hard as life.
The love of these is like the lightning spear,
And shrivels whom it touches. They consume
All things within their reach, and, last of all,
Their lonely selves; and then through time they tower,
Sublime but charred, and wear on their high fronts
The gloomy glory of the sunlit pine.
But the great gods of Song, in clear white light,
The radiance of their godhead, calmly dwell,
And with immutable cold starlike gaze
Scan both the upper and the under world,
As it revolves, themselves serenely fixed.
Their bias is the bias of the sphere,
That turns all ways, but turns away from none,
Save to return to it. They have no feud
With gods or men, the living or the dead,
The past or present, and their words complete
Life's incompleteness with a healing note.
For they are not more sensitive than strong,
More wise than tender; understanding all,
At peace with all, at peace with life and death,
And love that gives a meaning unto life
And takes from death the meaning and the sting:
At peace with hate, and every opposite.
Were I but one of these-presumptuous thought!-
Even you, the live fulfilment of such dreams
As these secrete, would hazard well your love
On my more largely loving. 'Twould be you,
Yes, even you, that first would flag and fail
In either of my choosing; you, whose wing
Would droop on mine and pray to be upborne.
And when my pinions did no more suffice
For that their double load, then softly down,
Softly and smoothly as descending lark
That hath fulfilled its rhapsody in Heaven,
And with diminished music must decline
To earthy sounds and concepts, I should curb
Illimitable longings to the range
Of lower aspiration. Were I such!-
But, since I am not-

SHE.
Am not? Who shall say,
Save she who tests, and haply to her loss?
'Tis better left untested. Strange that you,
Who can imagine whatso thing you will,
Should lack imagination to appraise
Imagination at its topmost worth.
Now wield your native sceptre and extend
Your fancy forth where Florence overbrims
In eddies fairer even than herself.
Look how the landscape smiles complacently
At its own beauty, as indeed it may;
Villa and vineyard each a separate home,
Containing possibilities unseen,
Materials for your pleasure. Now disport!
Which homestead may it please my lord of song
To chalk for his, as those rough Frenchmen did
Who came with bow-legged Charles to justify
Savonarola's scourgeful prophecies?
Shall it be that one gazing in our face,
Not jealous of its beauty, but exposed
To all the wantonness of sun and air,
With roses girt, with roses garlanded,
And balustraded terrace topped with jars
Of clove carnations; unambitious roof,
Italian equivalent to house
Love in a cottage? Why, the very place
For her you once described! Wait! Let me see,
Can I recall the lines? Yes, thus they ran.
Do you remember them? Or are they now
A chronicle forgotten and erased
From that convenient palimpsest, the heart?

In dewy covert of her eyes
The secret of the violet lies;
The sun and wind caress and pair
In the lithe wavelets of her hair;
The fragrance of the warm soft south
Hovers about her honeyed mouth;
And, when she moves, she floats through air
Like zephyr-wafted gossamer.
Hers is no lore of dumb dead books;
Her learning liveth in her looks;
And still she shows, in meek replies,
Wisdom enough to deem you wise.
Her voice as soothing is and sweet
As whispers of the waving wheat,
And in the moisture of her kiss
Is April-like deliciousness.
Like gloaming-hour, she doth inspire
A vague, an infinite desire;
And, like the stars, though out of sight,
Filleth the loneliness of night.
Come how she may, or slow or fleet,
She brings the morning on her feet;
Gone, leaves behind a nameless pain,
Like the sadness of a silenced strain.

HE.
A youthful dream.

SHE.
Yet memory can surmise
That young dream fruited to reality,
Then, like reality, was dream no more.
All dreams are youthful; you are dreaming still.
What lovely visions denizen your sleep!
Let me recall another; for I know
All you have written, thought, and felt, and much
You neither thought nor felt, but only sang.
A wondrous gift, a godlike gift, that breathes
Into our exiled clay unexiled lives,
Manlier than Adam, comelier than Eve.
That massive villa, we both know so well,
With one face set toward Settignano, one
Gazing at Bellosguardo, and its rear
Locked from the north by clustered cypresses,
That seem like fixed colossal sentinels,
And tower above its tower, but look not in,
Might be abode for her whom you conceived
In tropes so mystical, you must forgive
If recollection trips.

To dwell with her is calmly to abide
Through every change of time and every flux of tide.

In her the Present, Past, and Future meet,
The Father, and the Son, and dovelike Paraclete.

She holdeth silent intercourse with Night,
Still journeying with the stars, and shining with their light.

Her love, illumination; her embrace,
The sweep of angels' wings across a mortal's face.

Her lap is piled with autumn fruits, her brow
Crowned with the blossoming trails that smile from April's bough.

Like wintry stars that shine with frosty fire,
Her loftiness excites to elevate desire.

To love her is to burn with such a flame
As lights the lamp which bears the Sanctuary's name.

That lamp burns on for ever, day and night,
Before her mystic shrine. I am its acolyte.

HE.
The merest foam of fancy; foam and spray.

SHE.
Foam-drift of fancy that hath ebbed away.
See how the very simile rebukes
Man's all unsealike longings! For confess,
While ocean still returns, the puny waves
Of mortal love are sucked into the sand,
Their motion felt, their music heard, no more.
Look when the vines are linking hands, and seem
As pausing from the dance of Spring, or just
Preparing to renew it, round and round,
On the green carpet of the bladed corn,
That spreads about their feet: corn, vine, and fig,
Almond and mulberry, cherry, and pear, and peach,
Not taught to know their place, but left to range
Up to the villa's walls, windows, and doors,
And peep into its life and smile good-day,
A portion of its homeliness and joy:
A poet's villa once, a poet's again,
If you but dream it such; a roof for her,
To whom you wrote-I wonder who she was-
This saucy sonnet; saucy, withal sweet,
And O, how true of the reflected love
You poets render to your worshippers.

TRUE AS THE DIAL TO THE SUN.
You are the sun, and I the dial, sweet,
So you can mark on me what time you will.
If you move slowly, how can I move fleet?
And when you halt, I too must fain be still.
Chide not the cloudy humours of my brow,
If you behold no settled sunshine there:
Rather upbraid your own, sweet, and allow,
My looks cannot be foul if yours be fair.
Then from the heaven of your high witchery shine,
And I with smiles shall watch the hours glide by;
You have no mood that is not straightway mine;
My cheek but takes complexion from your eye.
All that I am dependeth so on you,
What clouds the sun must cloud the dial too.

HE.
No man should quarrel with his Past, and I
Maintain no feud with mine. Do we not ripen,
Ripen and mellow in love, unto the close,
Thanks no more to the present than the past?
First love is fresh but fugitive as Spring,
A wilding flower no sooner plucked than faded;
And summer's sultry fervour ends in storm,
Recriminating thunder, wasteful tears,
And angry gleam of lightning menaces.
Give me October's meditative haze,
Its gossamer mornings, dewy-wimpled eves,
Dewy and fragrant, fragrant and secure,
The long slow sound of farmward-wending wains,
When homely Love sups quiet 'mong its sheaves,
Sups 'mong its sheaves, its sickle at its side,
And all is peace, peace and plump fruitfulness.

SHE.
Picture of all we dream and we desire:
Autumn's grave cheerfulness and sober bliss,
Rich resignation, humble constancy.
For, prone to bear the load piled up by life,
We, once youth's pasture season at an end,
Submit to crawl. Unbroken to the last,
You spurn the goad of stern taskmaster Time.
Even 'mid autumn harvest you demand
Returning hope and blossom of the Spring,
All seasons and sensations, and at once,
Or in too quick succession. Do we blame?
We envy rather the eternal youth
We cannot share. But youth is pitiless,
And, marching onward, neither asks nor seeks
Who falls behind. Thus women who are wise,
Beside their thresholds knitting homely gear,
Wave wistful salutation as you pass,
And think of you regretfully, when gone:
A soft regret, a sweet regret, that is
Only the mellow fruit of unplucked joy.
Now improvise some other simple strain,
That with harmonious cadence may attune
The vain and hazard discords of discourse.

HE.
When Love was young, it asked for wings,
That it might still be roaming;
And away it sped, by fancy led,
Through dawn, and noon, and gloaming.
Each daintiness that blooms and blows
It wooed in honeyed metre,
And when it won the sweetest sweet,
It flew off to a sweeter:
When Love was young.

When Love was old, it craved for rest,
For home, and hearth, and haven;
For quiet talks round sheltered walks,
And long lawns smoothly shaven.
And what Love sought, at last it found,
A roof, a porch, a garden,
And from a fond unquestioning heart
Peace, sympathy, and pardon,
When Love was old.

SHE.
Simple, in sooth, and haply true: withal,
Too, too autumnal even for my heart.
I never weary of your vernal note.
Carol again, and sing me back my youth
With the redundant melodies of Spring.

HE.
I breathe my heart in the heart of the rose,
The rose that I pluck and send you,
With a prayer that the perfume its leaves enclose
May kiss, and caress, and tend you:
Caress and tend you till I can come,
To the garden where first I found you,
And the thought that as yet in the rose is dumb
Can ripple in music round you.

O rose, that will shortly be her guest,
You may well look happy, at leaving:
Will you lie in the cradle her snowy breast
Doth rock with its gentle heaving?
Will you mount the throne of her hazel hair,
That waves like a summer billow,
Or be hidden and hushed, at nightfall prayer,
In the folds of her dimpled pillow?

And when she awakes at dawn to feel
If you have been dreaming with her,
Then the whole of your secret, sweet rose, reveal,
And say I am coming thither:
And that when there is silence in earth and sky,
And peace from the cares that cumber,
She must not ask if your leaves or I
Be clasped in her perfumed slumber.

SHE.
Give me your hand; and, if you will, keep mine
Engraffed in yours, as slowly thus we skirt
La Doccia's dark declivity, and make
Athwart Majano's pathless pines a path
To lead us onward haply where it may.
Lo! the Carrara mountains flush to view,
That in the noonday were not visible.
Shall we not fold this comfort to our hearts,
Humbly rejoiced to think as there are heights
Seen only in the sunset, so our lives,
If that they lack not loftiness, may wear
A glow of glory on their furrowed fronts,
Until they faint and fade into the night!

poem by Alfred Austin
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A Poet’s Eightieth Birthday

``He dieth young whom the Gods love,'' was said
By Greek Menander; nor alone by One
Who gave to Greece his English song and sword
Re-echoed is the saying, but likewise he
``Who uttered nothing base,'' and from whose brow,
By right divine, the laurel lapsed to yours,-
Great sire, great successor,-in verse confirmed
The avowal of ``the Morning-Star of Song,''
Happiest is he that dieth in his flower.
Yet can it be that it is gain, not loss,
To quit the pageant of this life before
The heart hath learnt its meaning; leave half-seen,
Half-seen, half-felt, and not yet understood,
The beauty and the bounty of the world;
The fertile waywardness of wanton Spring,
Summer's deep calm, the modulated joy
Of Autumn conscious of a task fulfilled,
And home-abiding Winter's pregnant sleep,
The secret of the seasons? Gain, to leave
The depths of love unfathomed, its heights unscaled,
Rapture and woe unreconciled, and pain
Unprized, unapprehended? This is loss,
Loss and not gain, sheer forfeiture of good,
Is banishment from Eden, though its fruit
Remains untasted.

Interpret then the oracle, ``He dies young
Whom the Gods love,'' for Song infallible
Hath so pronounced! . . . Thus I interpret it:
The favourites of the Gods die young, for they,
They grow not old with grief and deadening time,
But still keep April moisture in their heart
May's music in their ears. Their voice revives,
Revives, rejuvenates, the wintry world,
Flushes the veins of gnarled and knotted age,
And crowns the majesty of life with leaves
As green as are the sapling's.

Thrice happy Poet! to have thus renewed
Your youth with wisdom,-who, though life still seems
To your fresh gaze as frolic and as fair
As in the callow season when your heart
Was but the haunt and pairing-place and nest
Of nightingale and cuckoo, have enriched
Joy's inexperienced warblings with the note
Of mellow music, and whose mind mature,
Laden with life's sustaining lessons, still
Gleams bright with hope; even as I saw, to-day,
An April rainbow span the August corn.

Long may your green maturity maintain
Its universal season; and your voice,
A household sound, be heard about our hearths,
Now as a Christmas carol, now as the glee
Of vernal Maypole, now as harvest song.
And when, like light withdrawn from earth to heaven,
Your glorious gloaming fades into the sky,
We, looking upward, shall behold you there,
Shining amid the young unageing stars.

poem by Alfred Austin
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Poet And The Muse

Whither, and whence, and why hast fled?
Thou art dumb, my muse; thou art dumb, thou art dead,
As a waterless stream, as a leafless tree.
What have I done to banish thee?

But a moon ago, the whole day long
My ears were full of the sound of song;
And still through my darkly silent dreams
Plashed the fitful music of far-off streams.

When the night turned pale and the stars grew dim,
The morning chanted a dewy hymn.
The fragrant languor of cradled noon
Was lulled by the hum of a self-sung tune.

Joy came on the wings of a jocund lay,
And sorrow in harmony passed away;
And the sunny hours of tideless time
Were buoyed on the surges of rolling rhyme.

The moon went up in a cloudless sky,
Silently but melodiously;
And the glitter of stars and the patter of rain
Were notes and chords of an endless strain.

And vision, and feeling, and sound, and scent,
Were the strings of a sensitive instrument,
That silently, patiently, watched and waited,
And unto my soul reverberated.

In the orchard reddens the rounded fruit
'Mid the yellowing leaves, but my voice is mute.
The thinned copse sighs like a heart forsaken,
But not one chord of my soul is shaken.

Through the gloaming broadens the harvest moon;
The fagged hind whistles his homeward tune;
The last load creaks up the hamlet hill;
'Tis only my voice, my voice that is still.

(The Muse answers)
Poet, look in your poet's heart.
It will tell you what keepeth us twain apart.
I have not left you; I still am near.
But a music not mine enchants your ear.

Another hath entered and nestles deep
In the lap of your love, like a babe asleep.
You watch her breathing from morn till night;
She is all your hearing and all your sight.

Yet fear not, poet, to do me wrong.
She is sweeter far than the sweetest song.
One looks and listens the way she went,
As towards lark that is lost in the firmament.

So gladly to her I you resign,
Her caress is tenderer much than mine;
I hover round you, and hear her kiss
With wonder at its melodiousness.

When you gaze on the moon, you see but her.
You hear her feet when the branches stir;
And sunrise and sunset and starlight only
Make their beauty, without her, feel more lonely.

So how should you, poet, hope to sing?
The lute of Love hath a single string.
Its note is sweet as the coo of the dove;
But 'tis only one note, and the note is Love.

But when once you have paired and built your nest,
And can brood therein with a settled breast,
You will sing once more, and your voice will stir
All hearts with the sweetness gained from her.

poem by Alfred Austin
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The Song Of Gracia

SPRING

Across the street, across the grass,
Across my life I watch her pass.
No pure star on a dusky height
Hath eyes more bright,
No lily on her emerald bed
A statelier head,
No dewdrop on the beaded thorn
More radiantly doth glow apart!
O, she doth shine all these to scorn
Fair are they all—star, flower, and dew;
She is the green bud breaking thro’
The winter of my heart.
Two violets, seeking Paradise,
Have hid themselves within her eyes.
Her lips are roses. She doth wear
A sunbeam woven in her hair.
And of the foam-flake of the sea
Her cheek and neck and bosom be.
And like a reed the low wind sways
Her slender figure glides along,
Serenely tall and fairy sweet
In this, the springtide of her days.
And O, to make my life a song
And lay it at her feet!

SUMMER

And now the world recedes. Time, Space, are fleeting.
All things but thee, O Love, have ceased to be.
Here where thy heart against my heart is beating,
And like a charm thy white arms compass me;
And on thy blue-veined breasts my head is lying,
And all about my face is blown thy hair.
Here let Love speak his full heart in sweet sighing,
For speech were powerless now to voice his prayer.
Softly thy breath, like scent of violets blowing,
Steals o’er my cheek with slow, delicious pain.
Drink whilst thou canst the goblet crowned and flowing,
For hours like these will never come again.

AUTUMN

There is no bud of Spring about this forest,
And in our hearts, too, are the autumn leaves.
Where are the wings, O Love, on which thou soarest?
Meeter art thou to toil and bind the sheaves.
But there is mellower light upon our faces,
Thro’ all our veins the steadier currents flow
The statelier charms remain and friendly graces,
Tho’ dull and fitful wanes love’s lava-glow.

WINTER

The slow bell tolls across the square:
She doth not hear its rise and swell.
The frosts of age have silvered there
The clusters of her sun-gold hair:
She sleepeth well.
Strange city echoes here are sent
Of reckless strife for prize and place,
Of hearts with warring passions rent,
But Death’s ineffable content
Is on her face—

A touch, a joy, a something there
That for my sake hath never shone;
Too well I deem in my despair
Her fairest dream I may not share,
And she is gone

Beyond these days of care and ruth
To those fair stars which poets sing,
Where grows the tree of fadeless Truth
In gardens of Immortal Youth,
Eternal Spring.

poem by George Essex Evans
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The Year of the Rose

From the depths of the green garden-closes
Where the summer in darkness dozes
Till autumn pluck from his hand
An hour-glass that holds not a sand;
From the maze that a flower-belt encloses
To the stones and sea-grass on the strand
How red was the reign of the roses
Over the rose-crowned land!

The year of the rose is brief;
From the first blade blown to the sheaf,
From the thin green leaf to the gold,
It has time to be sweet and grow old,
To triumph and leave not a leaf
For witness in winter's sight
How lovers once in the light
Would mix their breath with its breath,
And its spirit was quenched not of night,
As love is subdued not of death.

In the red-rose land not a mile
Of the meadows from stile to stile,
Of the valleys from stream to stream,
But the air was a long sweet dream
And the earth was a sweet wide smile
Red-mouthed of a goddess, returned
From the sea which had borne her and burned,
That with one swift smile of her mouth
Looked full on the north as it yearned,
And the north was more than the south.

For the north, when winter was long,
In his heart had made him a song,
And clothed it with wings of desire,
And shod it with shoon as of fire,
To carry the tale of his wrong
To the south-west wind by the sea,
That none might bear it but he
To the ear of the goddess unknown
Who waits till her time shall be
To take the world for a throne.

In the earth beneath, and above
In the heaven where her name is love,
She warms with light from her eyes
The seasons of life as they rise,
And her eyes are as eyes of a dove,
But the wings that lift her and bear
As an eagle's, and all her hair
As fire by the wind's breath curled,
And her passage is song through the air,
And her presence is spring through the world.

So turned she northward and came,
And the white-thorn land was aflame
With the fires that were shed from her feet,
That the north, by her love made sweet,
Should be called by a rose-red name;
And a murmur was heard as of doves,
And a music beginning of loves
In the light that the roses made,
Such light as the music loves,
The music of man with maid.

But the days drop one upon one,
And a chill soft wind is begun
In the heart of the rose-red maze
That weeps for the roseleaf days
And the reign of the rose undone
That ruled so long in the light,
And by spirit, and not by sight,
Through the darkness thrilled with its breath,
Still ruled in the viewless night,
As love might rule over death.

The time of lovers is brief;
From the fair first joy to the grief
That tells when love is grown old,
From the warm wild kiss to the cold,
From the red to the white-rose leaf,
They have but a season to seem
As rose-leaves lost on a stream
That part not and pass not apart
As a spirit from dream to dream,
As a sorrow from heart to heart.

From the bloom and the gloom that encloses
The death-bed of Love where he dozes
Till a relic be left not of sand
To the hour-glass that breaks in his hand;
From the change in the grey garden-closes
To the last stray grass of the strand,
A rain and ruin of roses
Over the red-rose land.

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Spring.

'Let the light rain on her, the sweet Spring, till
She teems with greenery in the warm air,
Flower-hued, and vocal with the tender joy
Of bleating lambs and young birds on the wing.'
Thus on the cold hill doth the herdsman pray
Beneath his frozen star; the milkmaid, too,
As her raw hands take up the milking-pail,
And the wind freezes in the red dawn near: —
'Come, Spring, earth's sap, and mount in me until
I bloom, a rose of love: smile in mine eyes
Till my love from his wintry hill shall see
The star of youth, and leap into my arms!
O Spring, sweet Spring! but hear my prayer, and I
Shall build thee bowers of roses on the hill,
And all the summer there with bird and bee
Shall joy feast in the beauty of our love!'
Thus do they chant the wintry time away
In hill and vale, the two who look to when
The warmth of beauty takes life's wonder on,
And the rose of the flesh shall bloom for them.

poem by Robert Crawford
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At Her Grave

Lo, here among the rest you sleep,
As though no difference were
'Twixt them and you, more wide, more deep,
Than such as fondness loves to keep
Round each lone sepulchre.

Yet they but human, you divine,
Warmed by that heavenly breath,
Which, when ephemeral lights decline,
Like lamp before nocturnal shrine,
Still burneth after death.

Yes, here in Tuscan soil you lie,
With Tuscan turf above;
And, lifting silent spires on high,
The cypresses remind the sky
Of the city of your love.

And you did grow so like to her
Wherein you dwelt so long,
Your thoughts, like her May roses, were
Untrained, unchecked, but how astir,
And oh how sweet, with song!

The Poet of Olympian mien
His frenzy doth control,
And, gazing on the dread Unseen,
Keep mind majestic, will serene,
And adamantine soul.

He, save to Wisdom sternly true,
Is but the sport of Fate
And gladiatorial pain. But you!
A poet, and a woman too!
The burden was too great.

And so you laid it down, and here,
Oblivious of life's load,
Quiet you sleep through all the year,
Young Spring, staid Summer, Autumn sere,
And Winter's icy goad.

The swallows, freshly on the wing,
In April's sun rejoice;
The nightingales unceasing sing;
Yes, Spring brings back the birds of Spring,
But not, alas! your voice.

So round your sleep I soft let fall
Frail emblems of regret;
The lowly wind-flower, tulip tall,
The iris mantling wayside wall,
And weeping violet.

My votive flowers to-day will blow,
To-morrow be decayed;
But, though long sunk from sight, I know,
The glory of your afterglow
Will never wholly fade.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Farewell To Spring

I saw this morning, with a sudden smart,
Spring preparing to depart.
I know her well and so I told her all my heart.

``Why did you, Spring, your coming so delay,
If, now here, you cannot stay?
You win my love and then unloving pass away.

``We waited, waited, O so long, so long,
Just to hear the ousel's song.
To-morrow 'twill be hushed, to-day that is so strong.

``Day after day, and dawn again on dawn,
Winter's shroud was on the lawn,
So still, so smooth, we thought 'twould never be withdrawn.

`Now that at last your welcome mimic snow
Doth upon the hawthorn blow,
It bides not on the bough, but melts before we know.

``Scarce hath the primrose o'er the sordid mould
Lavished treasure, than behold!
Our wealth of simple joy is robbed of all its gold.

``When to the woods we hie with feet of mirth,
Now the hyacinths have birth,
Swiftly the blue of Heaven fades from the face of earth.

``You with dry gusts and unrelenting wrack
Kept the liquid cuckoo back.
Now, even ere he goes, he turneth hoarse, alack!

``When, in the long warm nights of June,
Nightingales have got their tune,
Their sweet woe dies, and we are beggared of the boon.

``First drops the bloom, then darkens the green leaf;
Everything in life is brief,
Save autumn's deepening gloom and winter's changeless grief.''

Then with a smile thus answered me the Spring:
``To my voice and flight you cling,
For I, before I perch, again am on the wing.

``With you were I the whole year round to stay,
'Twould be you that went away,
Your love made fickle by monotony of May.

``Love cannot live save upon love beyond.
Leaving you, I keep you fond,
Not letting you despair, but making you despond.

`Farewell, and love me still, my lover dear,
Love me till another year,
And you, if you be true, again will find me here.''

Then darker, deeper, waxed the woods; the ground
Flowerless turned and then embrowned;
And less was of sweet scent, and less was of sweet sound.

Mute was the mavis, moulted was the thorn,
Meads were cut, and lambs were shorn,
And I by Spring was left forsaken and forlorn.

Forlorn, forsaken, shall I be until
Primrose peep and throstle shrill,
And in the orchard gleam the outriding daffodil.

Then shall I know that Spring among the trees
Hiding is, and that the breeze
Anew will fling abroad odours and melodies.

poem by Alfred Austin
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Love Outloved

I Love cometh and love goeth,
And he is wise who knoweth
Whither and whence love flies:
But wise and yet more wise
Are they that heed not whence he flies or whither
Who hither speeds to-day, to-morrow thither;
Like to the wind that as it listeth blows,
And man doth hear the sound thereof, but knows
Nor whence it comes nor whither yet it goes.

II

O sweet my sometime loved and worshipt one
A day thou gavest me
That rose full-orbed in starlike happiness
And lit our heaven that other stars had none:--
Sole as that westering sphere companionless
When twilight is begun
And the dead sun transfigureth the sea:
A day so bright
Methought the very shadow, from its light
Thrown, were enough to bless
(Albeit with but a shadow's benison)
The unborn days its dark posterity.
Methought our love, though dead, should be
Fair as in life, by memory
Embalmed, a rose with bloom for aye unblown.
But lo the forest is with faded leaves
And our two hearts with faded loves bestrown,
And in mine ear the weak wind grieves
And uttereth moan:
'Shed leaves and fallen, fallen loves and shed,
And those are dead and these are more than dead;
And those have known
The springtime, these the lovetime, overthrown,
With all fair times and pleasureful that be.'
And shall not we, O Time, and shall not we
Thy strong self see
Brought low and vanquishèd,
And made to bow the knee
And bow the head
To one that is when thou and thine are fled,
The silent-eyed austere Eternity?

III

Behold a new song still the lark doth sing
Each morning when he riseth from the grass,
And no man sigheth for the song that was,
The melody that yestermorn did bring.
The rose dies and the lily, and no man mourns
That nevermore the selfsame flower returns:
For well we know a thousand flowers will spring,
A thousand birds make music on the wing.
Ay me! fair things and sweet are birds and flowers,
The scent of lily and rose in gardens still,
The babble of beakèd mouths that speak no ill:
And love is sweeter yet than flower or bird,
Or any odor smelled or ditty heard--
Love is another and a sweeter thing.
But when the music ceaseth in Love's bowers,
Who listeneth well shall hear the silence stirred
With aftermoan of many a fretful string:
For when Love harpeth to the hollow hours,
His gladdest notes make saddest echoing.

poem by William Watson
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The Mother

I

IT was April, blossoming spring,
They buried me, when the birds did sing;

Earth, in clammy wedging earth,
They banked my bed with a black, damp girth.

Under the damp and under the mould,
I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold.

Out from the red beams, slanting and bright,
I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
And yet I kenned all things that seem.

I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
But you cannot bury a red sunbeam.

For though in the under-grave's doom-night
I lay all silent and stark and white,

Yet over my head I seemed to know
The murmurous moods of wind and snow,

The snows that wasted, the winds that blew,
The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew

The water-ghosts up from lakes below,
And the little flower-souls in earth that grow.

Under earth, in the grave's stark night,
I felt the stars and the moon's pale light.

I felt the winds of ocean and land
That whispered the blossoms soft and bland.

Though they had buried me dark and low,
My soul with the season's seemed to grow.

II

From throes of pain they buried me low,
For death had finished a mother's woe.

But under the sod, in the grave's dread doom,
I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom.

I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest
Was broken in wailings on my dead breast.

I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling;
Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring!

When the winds are soft and the blossoms are red
She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed.

I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night,
And then I rose in my grave-clothes white.

I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed
To the world of sorrowing overhead.

Men would have called me a thing of harm,
But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm.

I felt my breasts swell under my shroud;
No star shone white, no winds were loud;

But I stole me past the graveyard wall,
For the voice of my baby seemed to call;

And I kenned me a voice, though my lips were dumb:
Hush, baby, hush! for mother is come.

I passed the streets to my husband's home;
The chamber stairs in a dream I clomb;

I heard the sound of each sleeper's breath,
Light waves that break on the shores of death.

I listened a space at my chamber door,
Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor.

My babe was asleep on a stranger's arm,
'O baby, my baby, the grave is so warm,

'Though dark and so deep, for mother is there!
O come with me from the pain and care!

'O come with me from the anguish of earth,
Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth,

'Where the pillow is soft and the rest is long,
And mother will croon you a slumber-song–

'A slumber-song that will charm your eyes
To a sleep that never in earth-song lies!

'The loves of earth your being can spare,
But never the grave, for mother is there.'

I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast,
And stole me back to my long, long rest.

And here I lie with him under the stars,
Dead to earth, its peace and its wars;

Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms,
So long as he cradles up soft in my arms.

And heaven may open its shimmering doors,
And saints make music on pearly floors,

And hell may yawn to its infinite sea,
But they never can take my baby from me.

For so much a part of my soul he hath grown
That God doth know of it high on His throne.

And here I lie with him under the flowers
That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours,

With the night-airs that steal from the murmuring sea,
Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me.

poem by William Wilfred Campbell
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A Voyager's Dream Of Land

His very heart athirst
To gaze at nature in her green array,
Upon the ship's tall side he stands, possess'd
With visions prompted by intense desire;
Fair fields appear below, such as he left
Far distant, such as he would die to find:
He seeks them headlong, and is seen no more. ~ Cowper

The hollow dash of waves!–the ceaseless roar!
Silence, ye billows! vex my soul no more.

There's a spring in the woods by my sunny home,
Afar from the dark sea's tossing foam;
Oh! the fall of that fountain is sweet to hear,
As a song from the shore to the sailor's ear!

And the sparkle which up to the sun it throws,
Thro' the feathery fern and the olive boughs,
And the gleam on its path as it steals away
Into deeper shades from the sultry day,
And the large water-lilies that o'er its bed
Their pearly leaves to the soft light spread,
They haunt me! I dream of that bright spring's flow,
I thirst for its rills, like a wounded roe!

Be still, thou sea-bird, with thy clanging cry!
My spirit sickens, as thy wing sweeps by.

Know ye my home, with the lulling sound
Of leaves from the lime and the chestnut round?
Know ye it, brethren! where bower'd it lies,
Under the purple of southern skies?
With the streamy gold of the sun that shines
In thro' the cloud of its clustering vines,
And the summer-breath of the myrtle-flowers,
Borne from the mountain in dewy hours,
And the fire-fly's glance thro' the dark'ning shades,
Like shooting stars in the forest-glades,
And the scent of the citron at eve's dim fall
Speak! have ye known, have ye felt them all?

The heavy rolling surge! the rocking mast!
Hush! give my dream's deep music way, thou blast!

Oh! the glad sounds of the joyous earth!
The notes of the singing cicala's mirth,
The murmurs that live in the mountain pines,
The sighing of reeds as the day declines,
The wings flitting home thro' the crimson glow
That steeps the wood when the sun is low,
The voice of the night-bird that sends a thrill
To the heart of the leaves when the winds are still
I hear them! round me they rise, they swell,
They call back my spirit with Hope to dwell,
They come with a breath from the fresh spring-time,
And waken my youth in its hour of prime.

The white foam dashes high away, away!
Shroud my green land no more, thou blinding spray!

It is there! down the mountains I see the sweep
Of the chestnut forests, the rich and deep,
With the burden and glory of flowers that they bear,
Floating upborne on the blue summer-air,
And the light pouring thro' them in tender gleams,
And the flashing forth of a thousand streams!
Hold me not, brethren! I go, I go,
To the hills of my youth, where the myrtles blow,
To the depths of the woods, where the shadows rest,
Massy and still, on the greensward's breast,
To the rocks that resound with the water's play
I hear the sweet laugh of my fount give way!

Give way! the booming surge, the tempest's roar,
The sea-bird's wail, shall vex my soul no more.

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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To A Departed Spirit

From the bright stars, or from the viewless air,
Or from some world unreached by human thought,
Spirit, sweet spirit! if thy home be there,
And if thy visions with the past be fraught,
Answer me, answer me!

Have we not communed here of life and death?
Have we not said that love, such love as ours,
Was not to perish as a rose's breath,
To melt away, like song from festal bowers?
Answer me, answer me!

Thine eye's last light was mine - the soul thtat shone
Intensely, mournfully, through gathering haze -
Didst thou bear with thee to the shore unknown,
Nought of what lived in that long, earnest gaze!
Hear, hear, and answer me!

Thy voice - its low, soft, fervent, farewell tone
Thrilled through the tempest of the parting strife,
Like a faint breeze: - oh, from that music flown,
Send back
one
sound, if love's be quenchless life,
But once, oh! answer me!

In the still noontide, in the sunset's hush,
In the dead hour of night, when thought grows deep,
When the heart's phantoms from the darkness rush,
Fearfully beautiful, to strive with sleep -
Spirit! then answer me!

By the remembrance of our blended prayer;
By all our tears, whose mingling made them sweet
By our last hope, the victor o'er despair; -
Speak! if our souls in deathless yearnings meet;
Answer me, answer me!

The grave is silent: - and the far-off sky,
And the deep midnight - silent all, and lone!
Oh! if thy buried love make no reply,
What voice has earth! - Hear, pity, speak, mine own!
Answer me, answer me!

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Introit : V. Litany Of Beauty

Joy, if the Soul or aught immortal be,
How may this Beauty know mortality?

O Beauty, perfect child of Light,
Sempiternal spirit of delight!
White and set with gold like the gold of the night,
The gold of the stars in quiet weather,--
White and shapely and pure!--
O lily-flower from stain secure,
With life and virginity dying together!

One lily liveth so,
Liveth for ever unstained, immortal, a mystic flower:
Perfectly wrought its frame,
Gold inwrought and eternal white,
White more white than cold of the snow,
For never, never, near it came,
Never shall come till the end of all,
Hurtful thing in wind or shower,
Worm or stain or blight;
But ever, ever, gently fall
The dews elysian of years that flow
Where it doth live secure
In flawless comeliness mature,
Golden and white and pure.
In the fair far-shining glow
Of eternal and holy Light.

Beauty of earthly things
Wrought by God and with hands of men!
Beauty of Nature and Art,
Fashioned anew for each Time brings,
For each new soul and living heart!
Beauty of Beauty that fills the ken
Till the soul is swooning, faint with delight!
Beauty of human form and voice,
Of eyes and ears and lips!--
O golden hair and brow of white!--
Wine of Beauty that whoso sips
Doth die to a spirit free, and rejoice,
Living with God and living with men,
Rapt rejoice in eternal bliss,
Raising his face to meet the kiss
Of the Beauty seraphic he sees above
In figure of his love.

O Beauty of Wisdom unsought
That in trance to poet is taught,
Uttered in secret lay,
Singing the heart from earth away,
Cunning the soul from care to lure,--
O mystic lily, from stain and death secure,
Till the end of all to stay!
O shapely flower that must for ever endure!
O voice of God that every heart must hear!
O hymn of purest souls that dost unsphere
The ravished soul that hears! O white, white gem!
O rose that dost the senses drown in bliss!
No thought shall stay the wing, or stem
The song or win the heart to miss
Thy love, thy joy, thy rapture divine!
O Beauty, Beauty, ever thine
The soul, the heart, the brain,
To own three in a loud perpetual strain,
Shriller and sweeter than song of wine,
Than song of sorrow or love or war!

Beauty of heaven and sun and day,
Beauty of water and frost and star,
Beauty of dusk-tide, narrowing, grey!

Beauty of silver light,
Beauty of purple night,
Beauty of solemn breath,
Beauty of closèd eye, and sleep, and death!

Beauty of dawn and dew,
Beauty of morning peace,
Ever ancient and ever new,
Ever renewed till waking cease
Or sleep for ever, when loud the angel's word
Through all the world is heard!

Beauty of brute and bird,
Beauty of earthly creatures
Whose hearts by the hand of God are stirred!

Beauty of the soul,
Beauty informing forms and features,
Fairest to God's eye,--
Beauty that cannot fade or die
Though atoms to ruin roll!

Beauty of blinded Trust,
Led by the hand of God
To a heaven where Cherub hath never trod!

Austere Beauty of Truth
Lighting the way of the just!

Splendid Beauty of Youth
Staying when Youth is sped,
Living when Life is dead,
Burning in funeral dust!

The glory of form doth pale and pall,
Beauty endures to the end of all.

poem by Thomas MacDonagh
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If you were mine, if you were mine,

`If you were mine, if you were mine,
The day would dawn, the stars would shine,
The sun would set, the moon arise,
In holier and yet heavenlier skies.
Then unto me the Year would bring
A younger April, fresher Spring.
I should not then seek sylvan ways
For primrose clusters, woodbine sprays,
To hear the mavis' matin tale,
Or nocturn of the nightingale.
For at your coming there would pass
A glow, a glory, o'er the grass,
The flowers would in your gaze rejoice,
The wildwood carol in your voice,
Returning gleam chase lingering gloom,
And life be never out of bloom,
If you were mine!

`If you were mine, I should not know
In what fair month the roses blow,
When the pure lily bares her brow,
Or ringdoves coo their nuptial vow.
For, with your hand soft-clasped in mine,
I still should smell the eglantine,
And, wheresoe'er our steps should stray,
The incense of the new-mown hay.
By restless wave or restful mere,
In wanderings far or wanderings near,
On cheerful down, in pensive glen,
It would be always Summer then,
If you were mine.

`If you were mine, I should not fear
The warnings of the waning year,
The garnering sickle, girdled sheaf,
The falling acorn, floating leaf,
Moisture of eve and haze of morn,
Pearls turned to rubies on the thorn,
The silvering tress on fading brow,
The dimples that are furrows now.
For, leaving summits once I clomb,
With you, would seem but wending home.
Leaning on love in life's decline,
More sweet the shadow than the shine,
The cushat's perch than swallow's wing,
And Autumn peace than pomp of Spring,
If you were mine.

`If you were mine, how then should I
Heed frozen fallow, churlish sky,
Bleak, songless branches, sapless rind,
The wailing of the homeless wind,
The dwindling days, the deepening snow,
The dull, dead weight of wintry woe?
For, harkening to the Christmas peal
Without, our hearts within would feel,
In glowing rafter, flickering blaze,
The sunshine of departed days,
And round the hearth dear memories swarm
To keep life young, to keep love warm,
If you were mine.'

`Yet you are mine, yes, you are mine.
No length of land, no breadth of brine,
Can keep whom spirit links, apart,
Or make an exile of the heart.
And when from soul, no more the thrall
Of sense, the fleshly fetters fall,
And, purified by combats past,
Long-martyred love is crowned at last,
You then before the Heavenly Throne
Will take my hand, nor blush to own,
That you were mine!'

When June is wreathed with wilding rose
When June is wreathed with wilding rose,
And all the buds are blown,
And O, 'tis joy to dream and doze
In meadows newly mown,
Go take her where the graylings leap,
And where the dabchick dives,
Or where the bees from clover reap
The harvest for their hives;
For Summer is the season when,
If you but know the way,
A maid that's kissed will kiss again,
And pelt you with the hay,
The hay,
And pelt you with the hay.

poem by Alfred Austin
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At Dawn and Dusk

At Dawn and Dusk
Love-Laurel
IN MEMORY OF HENRY KENDALL

AH! that God once would touch my lips with song
To pierce, as prayer doth heaven, earth’s breast of iron,
So that with sweet mouth I might sing to thee,
O sweet dead singer buried by the sea,
A song, to woo thee, as a wooing siren,
Out of that silent sleep which seals too long
Thy mouth of melody.
For, if live lips might speak awhile to dead,
Or any speech could reach the sad world under
This world of ours, song surely should awake
Thee who didst dwell in shadow for song’s sake!
Alas! thou canst not hear the voice of thunder,
Nor low dirge over thy low-lying head
The winds of morning make.

Down through the clay there comes no sound of these;
Down in the grave there is no sign of Summer,
Nor any knowledge of the soft-eyed Spring;
But Death sits there, with outspread ebon wing,
Closing with dust the mouth of each new-comer
To that mute land, where never sound of seas
Is heard, and no birds sing.

Now thou hast found the end of all thy days
Hast thou found any heart a vigil keeping
For thee among the dead—some heart that heard
Thy singing when thou wert a brown, sweet bird
Gray Æons gone, in some old forest sleeping
Beneath the seas long since? in Death’s dim ways
Has thy heart any word?

For surely those in whom the deathless spark
Of song is kindled, sang from the beginning
If life were always? But the old desires—
Do they exist when sad-eyed Hope expires?
How live the dead? what crowns have they for winning?
Have they, to warm them in the dreamless dark,
For sun earth’s central fires?

Are the dead dead indeed whom we call dead?
Has God no life but this of ours for giving?—
When that they took thee by each well-known place,
Stark in thy coffin with a cold white face,
What thought, O Brother, hadst thou of the living?
What of the sun that round thee glory shed?
What of the fair day’s grace?

Is thy new life made up of memories
Or dreams that lull the dead, bright visions bringing
Of Spring above! Are thy days short or long?
Thou who wert master of our singing throng
Mayhap in death thou hast not lost thy singing,
But chauntst unheard, beside the moaning sea,
A solitary song.

The chance spade turns up skulls. God help the dead
And thee whose singing days have all passed over—
Thee, whom the gold-haired Spring shall seek in vain
When at the glad year’s doors she stands again,
Remembering the song-garlands thou hast wove her
In years gone by: but all these years have fled
With all their joy and pain.

. . . . .
My soul laughed out to hear my heart speak so,
And sprang forth skyward, as an eagle, hoping
To look upon thy soul with living eyes,
Until it came to where our dim life dies,
And dead suns darkly for a grave are groping
Through cycles of immeasurable woe,
Stone-blind in the blind skies.
The stars walk shuddering on that awful verge
From which my soul, with swift and fearless motion,
Clove the black depths, and sought for God and thee;
But God dwells where nor stars nor suns there be—
No shore there is to His Eternal Ocean;
A thousand systems are a fringe of surge
On that great starless sea.

And thou wert not. So that, with weary plumes,
My soul through the great void its way came winging
To earth again. “What hope for him who sings
Is there?” it sighed. “Death ends all sweetest things.”
When lo! there came a swell of mighty singing,
Flooding all space, and swift athwart the glooms
A flash of sudden wings.

. . . . .
Dreamer of dreams, thy songs and dreams are done.
Down where thou sleepest in earth’s secret bosom
There is no sorrow and no joy for thee,
Who canst not see what stars at eve there be,
Nor evermore at morn the green dawn blossom
Into the golden king-flower of the sun
Across the golden sea.
But haply there shall come in days to be
One who shall hear his own heart beating faster,
Plucking a rose sprung from thy heart beneath,
And from his soul, as sword from out its sheath,
Song shall leap forth where now, O silent master,
On thy lone grave beside the sounding sea,
I lay this laurel-wreath.

poem by Victor James Daley
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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An Autumn—Blooming Rose

I found, and plucked, an autumn-blooming rose,
And shut my eyes, and scented all its savour:
When lo! as in the month the blackthorn blows,
Lambs 'gan to bleat, and merle and lark to quaver.

Flower of my life! inestimably dear,
Now that its calendar wanes sere and sober,
To me your freshness, turning back the year,
Makes that seem April others call October.

With me 'tis Autumn, and with you 'tis Spring,
But Love hath brought these seasons sweet together.
Within your leafy life I sit and sing,
And you with me share wealth of harvest weather.

Thus all things we exchange, and nothing lose:
Take you life's wisdom, lend to me life's sweetness.
Your vernal voice shall wed my mellow muse,
And song give youth, and youth give song, completeness.

poem by Alfred Austin
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Austral Months

January

The first fair month! In singing Summer’s sphere
She glows, the eldest daughter of the year.
All light, all warmth, all passion, breaths of myrrh,
And subtle hints of rose-lands, come with her.
She is the warm, live month of lustre—she
Makes glad the land and lulls the strong, sad sea.
The highest hope comes with her. In her face
Of pure, clear colour lives exalted grace;
Her speech is beauty, and her radiant eyes
Are eloquent with splendid prophecies.

February

The bright-haired, blue-eyed last of Summer. Lo,
Her clear song lives in all the winds that blow;
The upland torrent and the lowland rill,
The stream of valley and the spring of hill,
The pools that slumber and the brooks that run
Where dense the leaves are, green the light of sun,
Take all her grace of voice and colour. She,
With rich warm vine-blood splashed from heel to knee,
Comes radiant through the yellow woodlands. Far
And near her sweet gifts shine like star by star.
She is the true Demeter. Life of root
Glows under her in gardens flushed with fruit;
She fills the fields with strength and passion—makes
A fire of lustre on the lawn-ringed lakes;
Her beauty awes the great wild sea; the height
Of grey magnificence takes strange delight
And softens at her presence, at the dear
Sweet face whose memory beams through all the year.

March

Clear upland voices, full of wind and stream,
Greet March, the sister of the flying beam
And speedy shadow. She, with rainbow crowned,
Lives in a sphere of songs of mazy sound.
The hymn of waters and the gale’s high tone,
With anthems from the thunder’s mountain throne,
Are with her ever. This, behold, is she
Who draws its great cry from the strong, sad sea;
She is the month of majesty. Her force
Is power that moves along a stately course,
Within the lines of order, like no wild
And lawless strength of winter’s fiercest child.
About her are the wind-whipped torrents; far
Above her gleams and flies the stormy star,
And round her, through the highlands and their rocks,
Rings loud the grand speech from the equinox.

April

The darling of Australia’s Autumn—now
Down dewy dells the strong, swift torrents flow!
This is the month of singing waters—here
A tender radiance fills the Southern year;
No bitter winter sets on herb and root,
Within these gracious glades, a frosty foot;
The spears of sleet, the arrows of the hail,
Are here unknown. But down the dark green dale
Of moss and myrtle, and the herby streams,
This April wanders in a home of dreams;
Her flower-soft name makes language falter. All
Her paths are soft and cool, and runnels fall
In music round her; and the woodlands sing
For evermore, with voice of wind and wing,
Because this is the month of beauty—this
The crowning grace of all the grace that is.

May

Now sings a cool, bland wind, where falls and flows
The runnel by the grave of last year’s rose;
Now, underneath the strong perennial leaves,
The first slow voice of wintering torrent grieves.
Now in a light like English August’s day,
Is seen the fair, sweet, chastened face of May;
She is the daughter of the year who stands
With Autumn’s last rich offerings in her hands;
Behind her gleams the ghost of April’s noon,
Before her is the far, faint dawn of June;
She lingers where the dells and dewy leas
Catch stormy sayings from the great bold seas;
Her nightly raiment is the misty fold
That zones her round with moonlight-coloured gold;
And in the day she sheds, from shining wings,
A tender heat that keeps the life in things.

June

Not like that month when, in imperial space,
The high, strong sun stares at the white world’s face;
Not like that haughty daughter of the year
Who moves, a splendour, in a splendid sphere;
But rather like a nymph of afternoon,
With cool, soft sunshine, comes Australian June.
She is the calm, sweet lady, from whose lips
No breath of living passion ever slips;
The wind that on her virgin forehead blows
Was born too late to speak of last year’s rose;
She never saw a blossom, but her eyes
Of tender beauty see blue, gracious skies;
She loves the mosses, and her feet have been
In woodlands where the leaves are always green;
Her days pass on with sea-songs, and her nights
Shine, full of stars, on lands of frosty lights.

July

High travelling winds, filled with the strong storm’s soul,
Are here, with dark, strange sayings from the Pole;
Now is the time when every great cave rings
With sharp, clear echoes caught from mountain springs;
This is the season when all torrents run
Beneath no bright, glad beauty of the sun.
Here, where the trace of last year’s green is lost,
Are haughty gales, and lordships of the frost.
Far down, by fields forlorn and forelands bleak,
Are wings that fly not, birds that never speak;
But in the deep hearts of the glens, unseen,
Stand grave, mute forests of eternal green;
And here the lady, born in wind and rain,
Comes oft to moan and clap her palms with pain.
This is our wild-faced July, in whose breast
Is never faultless light or perfect rest.

August

Across the range, by every scarred black fell,
Strong Winter blows his horn of wild farewell;
And in the glens, where yet there moves no wing,
A slow, sweet voice is singing of the Spring.
Yea, where the bright, quick woodland torrents run,
A music trembles under rain and sun.
The lips that breathe it are the lips of her
At whose dear touch the wan world’s pulses stir—
The nymph who sets the bow of promise high
And fills with warm life-light the bleak grey sky.
She is the fair-haired August. Ere she leaves
She brings the woodbine blossom round the eaves;
And where the bitter barbs of frost have been
She makes a beauty with her gold and green;
And, while a sea-song floats from bay and beach,
She sheds a mist of blossoms on the peach.

September
*

October

Where fountains sing and many waters meet,
October comes with blossom-trammelled feet.
She sheds green glory by the wayside rills
And clothes with grace the haughty-featured hills.
This is the queen of all the year. She brings
The pure chief beauty of our southern springs.
Fair lady of the yellow hair! Her breath
Starts flowers to life, and shames the storm to death;
Through tender nights and days of generous sun
By prospering woods her clear strong torrents run;
In far deep forests, where all life is mute,
Of leaf and bough she makes a touching lute.
Her life is lovely. Stream, and wind, and bird
Have seen her face—her marvellous voice have heard;
And, in strange tracts of wildwood, all day long,
They tell the story in surpassing song.

November

Now beats the first warm pulse of Summer—now
There shines great glory on the mountain’s brow.
The face of heaven in the western sky,
When falls the sun, is filled with Deity!
And while the first light floods the lake and lea,
The morning makes a marvel of the sea;
The strong leaves sing; and in the deep green zones
Of rock-bound glens the streams have many tones;
And where the evening-coloured waters pass,
Now glides November down fair falls of grass.
She is the wonder with the golden wings,
Who lays one hand in Summer’s—one in Spring’s;
About her hair a sunset radiance glows;
Her mouth is sister of the dewy rose;
And all the beauty of the pure blue skies
Has lent its lustre to her soft bright eyes.

December

The month whose face is holiness! She brings
With her the glory of majestic things.
What words of light, what high resplendent phrase
Have I for all the lustre of her days?
She comes, and carries in her shining sphere
August traditions of the world’s great year;
The noble tale which lifts the human race
Has made a morning of her sacred face.
Now in the emerald home of flower and wing
Clear summer streams their sweet hosannas sing;
The winds are full of anthems, and a lute
Speaks in the listening hills when night is mute
And through dim tracks where talks the royal tree
There floats a grand hymn from the mighty sea;
And where the grey, grave, pondering mountains stand
High music lives—the place is holy land!

poem by Henry Kendall
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Eight Years Old

SUN, whom the faltering snow-cloud fears,
Rise, let the time of year be May,
Speak now the word that April hears,
Let March have all his royal way;
Bid all spring raise in winter’s ears
All tunes her children hear or play,
Because the crown of eight glad years
On one bright head is set to-day.

II.

What matters cloud or sun to-day
To him who wears the wreath of years
So many, and all like flowers at play
With wind and sunshine, while his ears
Hear only song on every way?
More sweet than spring triumphant hears
Ring through the revel-rout of May
Are these, the notes that winter fears.

III.

Strong-hearted winter knows and fears
The music made of love at play,
Or haply loves the tune he hears
From hearts fulfilled with flowering May,
Whose molten music thaws his ears
Late frozen, deaf but yesterday
To sounds of dying and dawning years,
Now quickened on his deathward way.

IV.

For deathward now lies winter’s way
Down the green vestibule of years
That each year brightens day by day
With flower and shower till hope scarce fears
And fear grows wholly hope of May.
But we—the music in our ears
Made of love’s pulses as they play
The heart alone that makes it hears.

V.

The heart it is that plays and hears
High salutation of to-day.
Tongue falters, hand shrinks back, song fears
Its own unworthiness to play
Fit music for those eight sweet years,
Or sing their blithe accomplished way.
No song quite worth a young child’s ears
Broke ever even from birds in May.

VI.

There beats not in the heart of May,
When summer hopes and springtide fears,
There falls not from the height of day,
When sunlight speaks and silence hears,
So sweet a psalm as children play
And sing, each hour of all their years,
Each moment of their lovely way,
And know not how it thrills our ears.

VII.

Ah child, what are we, that our ears
Should hear you singing on your way,
Should have this happiness? The years
Whose hurrying wings about us play
Are not like yours, whose flower-time fears
Nought worse than sunlit showers in May,
Being sinless as the spring, that hears
Her own heart praise her every day.

VIII.

Yet we too triumph in the day
That bare, to entrance our eyes and ears,
To lighten daylight, and to play
Such notes as darkness knows and fears,
The child whose face illumes our way,
Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears,
Whose hand is as the hand of May
To bring us flowers from eight full years.

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Girl’s Day Dream And Its Fulfilment

“Child of my love, why wearest thou
That pensive look and thoughtful brow?
Can’st gaze abroad on this world so fair
And yet thy glance be fraught with care?
Roses still bloom in glowing dyes,
Sunshine still fills our summer skies,
Earth is still lovely, nature glad—
Why dost thou look so lone and sad?”

“Ah! mother it once sufficed thy child
To cherish a bird or flow’ret wild;
To see the moonbeams the waters kiss,
Was enough to fill her heart with bliss;
Or o’er the bright woodland stream to bow,
But these things may not suffice her now.”

“Perhaps ’tis music thou seekest, child?
Then list the notes of the song birds wild,
The gentle voice of the mountain breeze,
Whispering among the dark pine trees,
The surge sublime of the sounding main,
Or thy own loved lute’s soft silvery strain.”

“Mother, there’s music sweeter I know
Than bird’s soft note or than ocean’s flow,
Vague to me yet as sounds of a dream,
Yet dearer, brighter than sunshine’s gleam;
Such is the music I fain would hear,
All other sounds but tire mine ear!”

“Ah! thou seekest then a loving heart,
That in all thy griefs will bear a part,
That shelter will give in doubt and fear,
Come to me, loved one, thou’lt find it here!”

“Sweet mother, I almost fear to speak,
And remorseful blushes dye my cheek,
For though thou’st watched me from childhood’s hour,
As thou would’st have done a precious flower,
Though I love thee still as I did of yore,
Yet this weak heart seeketh something more:

A bliss as yet to my life unknown,
A heart whose throbs will be all mine own,
The tender tones of a cherished voice,
Of him who shall be my heart’s first choice;
And who at my feet alone shall bow,
This, this is the dream that haunts me now.”

“Alas, poor child, has it come to this?
Then bid farewell to thy childhood’s bliss,
To thy girlhood’s bright unfettered hours,
Thy sunny revels ’mid birds and flowers;
Of the golden zone yield up each strand
To cling to a hope, unstable as sand,
And forget the joys thy youth hath wove
In the stormy doubts of human love,
The feverish hopes and wearing pain
That form the links of Love’s bright chain!”
Alas! the mother spoke in vain!

The girl’s dream was soon fulfilled,
Her hopes by no dark cloud were chilled;
A lover ardent, noble too,
With flashing eyes of jetty hue,
With voice like music, sweet and soft,
Such as her dreams had pictured oft,
Now at her feet, a suppliant bowed,
And love eternal, changeless vowed.

Listening, then, with glowing cheek,
And rapture which no words might speak,
She thought, with bright and joyous smile,
They erred who thus could love revile,
Or say it had many a dark alloy,—
Had it not proved a dream of joy?

But, alas for her! she learned too soon
That love is fleeting as rose of June,
That her eyes might shine with olden light,
And yet be found no longer bright;
That she might devoted, faithful prove,
Yet her lover grow weary of her love.
Many an hour of silent tears,
Of heart-sick doubts, of humbling fears,
Of angry regrets, were hers, before
Her heart would say, “He loves no more.”

Weary of life and its thorny ways,
She sought the friend of her early days:
“Mother, I bring thee a breaking heart,
In sorrows deep it hath borne a part;
Speak to me tenderly as of yore,
Let thy kiss rest on my brow once more;
To the joys of my girlhood back I flee,
To live alone for them and for thee!”

poem by Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Properzia Rossi

Tell me no more, no more
Of my soul's lofty gifts! Are they not vain
To quench its haunting thirst for happiness?
Have I not lov'd, and striven, and fail'd to bind
One true heart unto me, whereon my own
Might find a resting-place, a home for all
Its burden of affections? I depart,
Unknown, tho' Fame goes with me; I must leave
The earth unknown. Yet it may be that death
Shall give my name a power to win such tears
As would have made life precious.

I.
ONE dream of passion and of beauty more!
And in its bright fulfillment let me pour
My soul away! Let earth retain a trace
Of that which lit my being, tho' its race
Might have been loftier far. Yet one more dream!
From my deep spirit one victorious gleam
Ere I depart! For thee alone, for thee!
May this last work, this farewell triumph be,
Thou, lov'd so vainly! I would leave enshrined
Something immortal of my heart and mind,
That yet may speak to thee when I am gone,
Shaking thine inmost bosom with a tone
Of lost affection; something that may prove
What she hath been, whose melancholy love
On thee was lavish'd; silent pang and tear,
And fervent song, that gush'd when none were near,
And dream by night, and weary thought by day,
Stealing the brightness from her life away,
While thou, Awake! not yet within me die,
Under the burden and the agony
Of this vain tenderness my spirit, wake!
Ev'n for thy sorrowful affection's sake,
Live! in thy work breathe out! that he may yet
Feeling sad mastery there, perchance regret
Thine unrequited gift.

II.
It comes, the power
Within me born, flows back; my fruitless dower
That could not win me love. Yet once again
I greet it proudly, with its rushing train
Of glorious images: they throng they press
A sudden joy lights up my loneliness,
I shall not perish all!
The bright work grows
Beneath my hand, unfolding, as a rose,
Leaf after leaf, to beauty; line by line,
I fix my thought, heart, soul, to burn, to shine,
Thro' the pale marble's veins. It grows and now
I give my own life's history to thy brow,
Forsaken Ariadne! thou shalt wear
My form, my lineaments; but oh! more fair,
Touched into lovelier being by the glow
Which in me dwells, as by the summer-light
All things are glorified. From thee my wo
Shall yet look beautiful to meet his sight,

When I am pass'd away. Thou art the mould,
Wherein I pour the fervent thoughts, th' untold,
The self-consuming! Speak to him of me,
Thou, the deserted by the lonely sea,
With the soft sadness of thine earnest eye,
Speak to him, lorn one, deeply, mournfully,
Of all my love and grief! Oh! could I throw
Into thy frame a voice, a sweet, and low,
And thrilling voice of song! when he came nigh,
To send the passion of its melody
Thro' his pierced bosom on its tones to bear
My life's deep feeling as the southern air
Wafts the faint myrtle's breath, to rise, to swell,
To sink away in accents of farewell,
Winning but one, one gush of tears, whose flow
Surely my parted spirit yet might know,
If love be strong as death!

III.
Now fair thou art,
Thou form, whose life is of my burning heart!
Yet all the vision that within me wrought,
I cannot make thee! Oh! I might have given
Birth to creations of far nobler thought,
I might have kindled, with the fire of heaven,
Things not of such as die! But I have been
Too much alone; a heart, whereon to lean,
With all these deep affections that o'erflow
My aching soul, and find no shore below,
An eye to be my star; a voice to bring
Hope o'er my path like sounds that breathe of spring,
These are denied me dreamt of still in vain,
Therefore my brief aspirings from the chain,
Are ever but as some wild fitful song,
Rising triumphantly, to die ere long
In dirge-like echoes.

IV.
Yet the world will see
Little of this, my parting work, in thee,
Thou shalt have fame! Oh, mockery! give the reed
From storms a shelter, give the drooping vine
Something round which its tendrils may entwine,
Give the parch'd flower a rain-drop, and the meed
Of love's kind words to woman! Worthless fame!
That in his bosom wins not for my name
Th' abiding place it ask'd! Yet how my heart,
In its own fairy world of song and art,
Once beat for praise! Are those high longings o'er?
That which I have been can I be no more?
Never, oh! never more; tho' still thy sky
Be blue as then, my glorious Italy!
And tho' the music, whose rich breathings fill
Thine air with soul, be wandering past me still,
And tho' the mantle of thy sunlight streams
Unchang'd on forms instinct with poet-dreams;

Never, oh! never more! Where'er I move,
The shadow of this broken-hearted love
Is on me and around! Too well they know,
Whose life is all within, too soon and well,
When there the blight hath settled; but I go
Under the silent wings of Peace to dwell;
From the slow wasting, from the lonely pain,
The inward burning of those words 'in vain',
Sear'd on the heart I go. 'Twill soon be past,
Sunshine, and song, and bright Italian heaven,
And thou, oh! thou, on whom my spirit cast
Unvalued wealth, who know'st not what was given
In that devotedness, the sad, and deep,
And unrepaid farewell! If I could weep
Once, only once, belov'd one! on thy breast,
Pouring my heart forth ere I sink to rest!
But that were happiness, and unto me
Earth's gift is fame. Yet I was form'd to be
So richly bless'd! With thee to watch the sky,
Speaking not, feeling but that thou wert nigh:

With thee to listen, while the tones of song
Swept ev'n as part of our sweet air along,
To listen silently; with thee to gaze
On forms, the deified of olden days,
This had been joy enough; and hour by hour,
From its glad well-springs drinking life and power,
How had my spirit soar'd, and made its fame
A glory for thy brow! Dreams, dreams! the fire
Burns faint within me. Yet I leave my name?
As a deep thrill may linger on the lyre
When its full chords are hush'd?awhile to live,
And one day haply in thy heart revive
Sad thoughts of me: I leave it, with a sound,
A spell o'er memory, mournfully profound;
I leave it, on my country's air to dwell,
Say proudly yet?'
'Twas hers who lov'd me well!
'

poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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Give me October's meditative haze

Give me October's meditative haze,
Its gossamer mornings, dewy-wimpled eves,
Dewy and fragrant, fragrant and secure,
The long slow sound of farmward-wending wains,
When homely Love sups quiet 'mid his sheaves,
Sups 'mid his sheaves, his sickle at his side,
And all is peace, peace and plump fruitfulness.

poem by Alfred Austin
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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