Sing flutes of harvest

Where men rejoice ; Sing rounds of reapers, –

And my Love's voice.

But when comes Winter

With hail and storm, And red fire roaring

And ingle warm,Sing first sad going

Of friends that part ; Then sing glad meeting,

And my Love's heart.

THE PARADOX OF TIME.

(A VARIATION ON RONSARD.)

“Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame! Las ! le temps non : mais NOUS nous en allons !"

TIME goes, you say?

? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go ;
Or else, were this not so,
What need to chain the hours,
For Youth were always ours ?

Time goes, you say?-ah no !

Ours is the eyes' deceit
Of men whose flying feet

Lead through some landscape low;
We pass, and think we see
The earth's fixed surface flee :-

Alas, Time stays,—we go !

Once in the days of old,
Your locks were curling gold,

And mine had shamed the crow.
Now, in the self-same stage,
We've reached the silver age ;

Time goes, you say ?-ah no !

66

rose

Once, when my voice was strong,
I filled the woods with song
To praise your

” and “ snow"; My bird, that sang, is dead ; Where are your roses fled ?

Alas, Time stays,—we go!

See, in what traversed ways,
What backward Fate delays

The hopes we used to know ;
Where are our old desires ?
Ah, where those vanished fires ?

Time goes, you say?-ah no!

TO A GREEK GIRL.

WITH

breath of thyme and bees that hum,

Across the years you seem to come, Across the years with nymph-like head, And wind-blown brows unfilleted ; A girlish shape that slips the bud

In lines of unspoiled symmetry ; A girlish shape that stirs the blood

With pulse of Spring, Autonoë !

Where'er you pass,—where'er you go,
I hear the pebbly rillet flow;
Where'er you go,—where'er you pass,
There comes a gladness on the grass ;
You bring blithe airs where'er you tread,-

Blithe airs that blow from down and sea ;
You wake in me a Pan not dead,-

Not wholly dead !-Autonoë !

How sweet with you on some green sod
To wreathe the rustic garden-god;
How sweet beneath the chestnut's shade
With you to weave a basket-braid ;

N

To watch across the stricken chords

Your rosy-twinkling fingers flee ; To woo you in soft woodland words,

With woodland pipe, Autonoë !

In vain,-in vain! The

years

divide :
Where Thamis rolls a murky tide,
I sit and fill my painful reams,
And see you only in my dreams ;-
A vision, like Alcestis, brought

From under-lands of Memory,–
A dream of Form in days of Thought,-

A dream,--a dream, Autonoë !