My love and I are one, and yet
Full oft my cheeks with tears are wet-
So sweet the night is and the bower!
My love gave me a passion-flower.

So sweet! Hold fast my hands. Can God
Make all this joy revert to sod,

And leave to me but this for dower

My love gave me a passion-flower.

Margaret Fuller [1871

NORAH

I KNEW his house by the poplar-trees,
Green and silvery in the breeze;

"A heaven-high hedge," were the words he said, "And holly-hocks, pink and white and red. . . .”

It seemed so far from McChesney's Hall-
Where first he told me about it all.

A long path runs inside from the gate,—
He still can take it, early or late;

But where in the world is the path for me

Except the river that runs to the sea!

Goethe and Frederika

THERE'S WISDOM IN WOMEN

1055

"OH love is fair, and love is rare;" my dear one she said, "But love goes lightly over." I bowed her foolish head, And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;

So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.

But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,

And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their

own,

Or how should my dear one, being ignorant and young, Have cried on love so bitterly, with so true a tongue? Rupert Brooke [1887-1915]

GOETHE AND FREDERIKA

WANDER, oh, wander, maiden sweet,
In the fairy bower, while yet you may;
See in rapture he lies at your feet;
Rest on the truth of the glorious youth,
Rest-for a summer day.

That great clear spirit of flickering fire
You have lulled awhile in magic sleep,
But

you cannot fill his wide desire.

His heart is tender, his eyes are deep,

His words divinely flow;

But his voice and his glance are not for you;

He never can be to a maiden true;

Soon will he wake and go.

Well, well, 'twere a piteous thing

To chain forever that strong young wing.
Let the butterfly break for his own sweet sake
The gossamer threads that have bound him;
Let him shed in free flight his rainbow light,
And gladden the world around him.
Short is the struggle and slight is the strain;
Such a web was made to be broken,
And she that wove it may weave again

Or, if no power of love to bless

Can heal the wound in her bosom true,
It is but a lorn heart more or less,

And hearts are many and poets few,

So his pardon is lightly spoken.

Henry Sidgwick [1838-1901]

THE SONG OF THE KING'S MINSTREL

I SING no longer of the skies,

And the swift clouds like driven ships, For there is earth upon my eyes

And earth between my singing lips. Because the King loved not my song

That he had found so sweet before, I lie at peace the whole night long, And sing no more.

The King liked well my song that night;
Upon the palace roof he lay

With his fair Queen, and as I might
I sang, until the morning's gray
Crept o'er their faces, and the King,

Mocked by the breaking dawn above,
Clutched at his youth and bade me sing
A song of love.

Well it might be the King was old,

And though his Queen was passing fair,
His dull eyes might not catch the gold
That tangled in her wayward hair,
It had been much to see her smile,

But with my song I made her weep.
Our heavens last but a little while,
So now I sleep.

More than the pleasures that I had

I would have flung away to know My song of love could make her sad, Her sweet eyes fill and tremble so.

Annie Shore and Johnnie Doon

What were my paltry store of years,

My body's wretched life to stake,
Against the treasure of her tears,
For my love's sake?

Not lightly is a King made wise;
My body ached beneath his whips,
And there is earth upon my eyes,

And earth between my singing lips.
But I sang once-and for that grace
I am content to lie and store
The vision of her dear, wet face,

And sing no more.

1057

Richard Middleton [1882–1911]

ANNIE SHORE AND JOHNNIE DOON

ANNIE Shore, 'twas, sang last night

Down in South End saloon;

A tawdry creature in the light,
Painted cheeks, eyes over bright,
Singing a dance-hall tune.

I'd be forgetting Annie's singing—
I'd not have thought again-

But for the thing that cried and fluttered

Through all the shrill refrain:

Youth crying above foul words, cheap music,
And innocence in pain.

They sentenced Johnnie Doon today

For murder, stark and grim:

Death's none too dear a price, they say,
For such-like men as him to pay:

No need to pity him!

And Johnnie Doon I'd not be pitying-
I could forget him now-

But for the childish look of trouble

That fell across his brow,

For the twisting hands he looked at dumbly

As if they'd sinned, he knew not how.

Patrick Orr [18