FROM "A LOVE-TRILOGY"

I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove, That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love,

breathing low that I sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,

That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,

That ye sing in his ears of the joy that forever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair, That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,

A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,

But love once gone, goes forever, and all that endures is the grief.

THE DEAD

THE dead abide with us! Though stark and cold

Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:

They have forged our chains of being for good or ill;

And their invisible hands these hands yet hold.

Our perishable bodies are the mould
In which their strong imperishable will
Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil
Hath grown incorporate through dim time
untold.

Vibrations infinite of life in death,

As a star's travelling light survives its star! So may we hold our lives, that when we are The fate of those who then will draw this breath,

They shall not drag us to their judgmentbar,

And curse the heritage which we bequeath.

FROM "LOVE IN EXILE"

I

WHY will you haunt me unawares,
And walk into my sleep,

Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares,
Where long-dried perfume scents the airs,
While ghosts of sorrow creep,
Where on Hope's ruined altar-stairs,
With ineffectual beams,
The Moon of Memory coldly glares
Upon the land of dreams?

My yearning eyes were fain to look
Upon your hidden face;
Their love, alas! you could not brook,
But in your own you mutely took
My hand, and for a space
You wrung it till I throbbed and shook,
And woke with wildest moan
And wet face channelled like a brook
With your tears or my own.

Now they exchange averted sighs Or stand and marry silent eyes.

And he to her a hero is
And sweeter she than primroses;
Their common silence dearer far
Than nightingale and mavis are.

Now when they sever wedded hands, Joy trembles in their bosom-strands, And lovely laughter leaps and falls Upon their lips in madrigals.

TO N. V. DE G. S.

THE unfathomable sea, and time, and tears, The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings

Dispart us; and the river of events
Has, for an age of years, to east and west
More widely borne our cradles. Thou to

me

Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn Descry a land far off and know not which. So I approach uncertain; so I cruise Round thy mysterious islet, and behold Surf and great mountains and loud riverbars,

And from the shore hear inland voices call. Strange is the seaman's heart; he hopes, he fears;

Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast;

Last, his rent sail refits, and to the deep
His shattered prow uncomforted puts back.
Yet as he goes he ponders at the helm
Of that bright island; where he feared to
touch,

His spirit readventures; and for years, Where by his wife he slumbers safe at home,

Thoughts of that land revisit him; he sees The eternal mountains beckon, and awakes Yearning for that far home that might have been.

IN THE STATES

WITH half a heart I wander here
As from an age gone by,

A brother-yet though young in years,
An elder brother, I.

You speak another tongue than mine, Though both were English born.