And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness

Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:

The eye marvelled marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;

The ear harkened to the stillness of the solemn air;

No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,

And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.

Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,

They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze

Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;

Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;

Or peering up from under the whitemossed wonder,

'O look at the trees!' they cried, 'O look at the trees!'

With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,

Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asun-

der:

When now already the sun, in pale display

Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below

His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir

of the day.

For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;

And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,

Tread along brown paths, as toward their toil they go:

But even for them awhile no cares encumber

Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,

The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber

At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken.

I LOVE ALL BEAUTEOUS THINGS

I LOVE all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them;
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.

I too will something make
And joy in the making;
Altho' to-morrow it seem

Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.

FROM NEW POEMS AND LATER POEMS

MY DELIGHT AND THY DELIGHT

My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night:

My desire and thy desire
Twining to a tongue of fire,
Leaping live, and laughing higher;
Thro' the everlasting strife
In the mystery of life.

Love, from whom the world begun,
Hath the secret of the sun.

Love can tell, and love alone, Whence the million stars were strewn, Why each atom knows its own, How, in spite of woe and death, Gay is life, and sweet is breath:

This he taught us, this we knew,

Happy in his science true,
Hand in hand as we stood

Neath the shadows of the wood,
Heart to heart as we lay
In the dawning of the day.

PATER FILIO

SENSE with keenest edge unused,
Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire;
Lovely feet as yet unbruisèd

On the ways of dark desire;
Sweetest hope that lookest smiling
O'er the wilderness defiling!

Why such beauty, to be blighted

By the swarm of foul destruction?
Why such innocence delighted,

When sin stalks to thy seduction?
All the litanies e'er chaunted
Shall not keep thy faith undaunted.

I have pray'd the sainted Morning
To unclasp her hands to hold thee;
From resignful Eve's adorning

Stol'n a robe of peace to enfold thee; With all charms of man's contriving Arm'd thee for thy lonely striving.

Me too once unthinking Nature, -Whence Love's timeless mockery took

me,

Fashion'd so divine a creature,

Yea, and like a beast forsook me.

I forgave, but tell the measure Of her crime in thee, my treasure.

MELANCHOLIA

THE sickness of desire, that in dark days Looks on the imagination of despair, Forgetteth man, and stinteth God his praise;

Nor but in sleep findeth a cure for care. Incertainty that once gave scope to dream Of laughing enterprise and glory untold, Is now a blackness that no stars redeem, A wall of terror in a night of cold.

Fool! that thou hast impossibly desired And now impatiently despairest, see How nought is changed: Joy's wisdom is attired

Splendid for others' eyes if not for thee: Not love or beauty or youth from earth is fled:

If they delite thee not, 'tis thou art dead.

I feel a childish tremor through me run, Stronger than reason, lest by some far chance

Fate's ear to our sad plaints should yet be won

And these our lives be thrown back on our hands.

I tremble when I think of my past years, My hopes, my aims, my wishes. All these days

I might have wandered far from Love and thee.

But kind fate held me, heedless of my

prayers,

A prisoner to its wise mysterious ways, And forced me to thy feet-ah fortunate me!

XI. ON HER LIGHTHEARTEDNESS

I WOULD I had thy courage, dear, to face This bankruptcy of love, and greet despair With smiling eyes and unconcerned embrace,

And these few words of banter at "dull care".

I would that I could sing and comb my hair

Like thee the morning thro', and choose my dress,

And gravely argue what I best should wear, A shade of ribbon or a fold of lace.

I would I had thy courage and thy peace, Peace passing understanding; that mine eyes

Could find forgetfulness like thine in sleep; That all the past for me like thee could

cease

And leave me cheerfully, sublimely wise, Like David with washed face who ceased

to weep.

XXI. HIS BONDAGE TO MANON IS BROKEN
FROM this day forth I lead another life,
Another life! A life without a tear!
To-day has ended the unequal strife;
My service and my sorrow finish here.
See, my soul cuts her cable of belief
And sails towards the ocean. She shall
steer

Sublime henceforth o'er accidents of grief. I have loved too much, too loyally, too long.

To-day I am a pirate of the sea.

Let others suffer. I have suffered wrong.
Let others love, and love as tenderly.
Oh, Manon, there are women yet unborn
Shall rue thy frailty, else am I forsworn.

XXXIII.

BEMINDING HER OF A PROMISE

Он, Juliet, we have quarreled with our fate,

And fate has struck us. Wherefore do we cry?

We prayed for liberty, and now too late Find liberty is this, to say "good-bye". The Winter which we loved not has gone by,

And Spring is come. The gardens, which were bare

When we first wandered through them, you and I,

The prisoners of our vain wishes, are Now full of golden flowers. The very lane Down to the sea is green. The cactus hedge

We saw cut down has sprouted new again, And swallows have their nests on the cliff's edge

Where we so often sat and dared complain Because our joy was new, and called it pain.

A glory, a romance of many years. What you may be henceforth I will not know.

The phantom of your presence on my fears
Is impotent at length for weal or woe.
Your past, your present, all alike must fade
In a new land of dreams where love is not.
Then kiss me and farewell. The choice is
made

And we shall live to see the past forgot,
If not forgiven. See, I came to curse,
Yet stay to bless. I know not which is

worse.

LV. ST. VALENTINE'S DAY TO-DAY, all day, I rode upon the Down, With hounds and horsemen, a brave company.

On this side in its glory lay the sea,

On that the Sussex Weald, a sea of brown. The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone,

And still we galloped on from gorse to gorse.

And once, when checked, a thrush sang, and my horse

Pricked his quick ears as to a sound unknown.

I knew the Spring was come. I knew it

even

Better than all by this, that through my chase

In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven

I seemed to see and follow still your face. Your face my quarry was. For it I rode, My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.

LVI. TO ONE WHOM HE DARED NOT LOVE

AS ONE who, in a desert wandering
Alone and faint beneath a pitiless sky,
And doubting in his heart if he shall bring
His bones back to his kindred or there die,
Finds at his feet a treasure suddenly
Such as would make him for all time a
king,

And so forgets his fears and with keen eye Falls to a-counting each new precious thing:

So was I when you told me yesterday The tale of your dear love. Awhile I stood

Astonished and enraptured, and my heart Began to count its treasures. Now dismay Steals back my joy, and terror chills my blood,

And I remember only "We must part."

LXI. TO ONE EXCUSING HIS POVERTY

АH! love, impute it not to me a sin That my poor soul thus beggared comes to thee.

My soul a pilgrim was, in search of thine,

And met these accidents by land and sea.
The world was hard, and took its usury,
Its toll for each new night in each new inn;
And every road had robber bands to fee;
And all, even kindness, must be paid in
coin.

Behold my scrip is empty, my heart bare.
I give thee nothing who my all would give.
My pilgrimage is finished, and I fare
Bare to my death, unless with thee I live.
Ah! give, love, and forgive that I am poor.
Ah! take me to thy arms and ask no more.

LXIX. SIBYLLINE BOOKS

WHEN first, a boy, at your fair knees I kneeled,

'Twas with a worthy offering. In my hand My young life's book I held, a volume sealed,

Which none but you, I deemed, might understand.

And you I did entreat to loose the band And read therein your own soul's destiny. But, Tarquin-like, you turned from my demand,

Too proudly fair to find your fate in me. When now I come, alas, what hands have turned

Those virgin pages! Some are torn away, And some defaced, and some with passion burned,

And some besmeared with life's least holy clay.

Say, shall I offer you these pages wet With blood and tears? And will your sorrow read

What your joy heeded not?-Unopened yet
One page remains. It still may hold a fate,
A counsel for the day of utter need.
Nay, speak, sad heart, speak quick.
hour is late.
Age threatens us. The Gaul is at the gate.

LXXI. THE TWO HIGHWAYMEN

The

I LONG have had a quarrel set with Time,
Because he robbed me. Every day of life
Was wrested from me after bitter strife,
I never yet could see the sun go down
But I was angry in my heart, nor hear
The leaves fall in the wind without a tear
Over the dying summer. I have known
No truce with Time nor Time's accomplice,
Death.

The fair world is the witness of a crime
Repeated every hour. For life and breath
Are sweet to all who live; and bitterly
The voices of these robbers of the heath
Sound in each ear and chill the passer by.
What have we done to thee, thou mon-

strous Time?

What have we done to Death that we must die?