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!

Once, when

my voice was strong, I filled the woods with song

To praise your rose " 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!

How far, how far, O Sweet,
The past behind our feet
Lies in the even-glow!
Now, on the forward way,
Let us fold hands, and pray;
Alas, Time stays,—we go!

TO A GREEK GIRL

WITH

7ITH 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 ;

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!

THE DEATH OF PROCRIS

A VERSION SUGGESTED BY THE SO-NAMED PICTURE

OF PIERO DI COSIMO, IN THE NATIONAL

GALLERY

PROCRIS the nymph had wedded Cephalus : He, till the spring had warmed to slowwinged days

Heavy with June, untired and amorous,

Named her his love; but now, in unknown

ways,

His heart was gone; and evermore his gaze Turned from her own, and ever farther ranged His woodland war; while she, in dull amaze, Beholding with the hours her husband changed, Sighed for his lost caress, by some hard god estranged.

So, on a day, she rose and found him not. Alone, with wet, sad eye, she watched the shade Brighten below a soft-rayed sun that shot Arrows of light through all the deep-leaved glade;

Then, with weak hands, she knotted up the

braid