She knew not those sweet words she spake,
Nor knew her own sweet way;

But there's never a bird, so sweet a song
Thronged in whose throat that day!

Oh, there were flowers in Storrington
On the turf and on the spray;
But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills
Was the Daisy-flower that day!

Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face!
She gave me tokens three:--

A look, a word of her winsome mouth,
And a wild raspberry.

A berry red, a guileless look,

A still word,-strings of sand!

And yet they made my wild, wild heart
Fly down to her little hand.

For standing artless as the air,
And candid as the skies,

She took the berries with her hand,
And the love with her sweet eyes.

The fairest things have fleetest end:
Their scent survives their close,

But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose!

She looked a little wistfully,

Then went her sunshine way:

The sea's eye had a mist on it,

And the leaves fell from the day.

She went her unremembering way,

She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,

And partings yet to be.

To Petronilla

She left me marveling why my soul

Was sad that she was glad;

At all the sadness in the sweet,

The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still
Look up with soft replies,

And take the berries with her hand,
And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain,

And perish in our own.

343

Francis Thompson [1859?-1907]

TO PETRONILLA WHO HAS PUT UP HER HAIR

YESTERDAY it blew alway,

Yesterday is dead,

Now forever must it stay

Coiled about your head,

Tell me Whence the great Command

Hitherward has sped.

"Silly boy, as if I knew,"

Petronilla said.

Nay, but I am very sure,

Since you left my side,
Something has befallen you,

You are fain to hide,

Homage has been done to you,

Innocents have died.

"Silly boy, and what of that?"

Petronilla cried.

Petronilla, much I fear

Scarcely have you wept

All those merry yesterdays,
Slaughtered whilst you slept,

Slain to bind that pretty crown

Closer round your head.

"Silly boy, as if I cared,"

Petronilla said.

Henry Howarth Bashford [1880

THE GYPSY GIRL

PASSING I saw her as she stood beside
A lonely stream between two barren wolds;
Her loose vest hung in rudely gathered folds
On her swart bosom, which in maiden pride
Pillowed a string of pearls; among her hair
Twined the light bluebell and the stone-crop gay;
And not far thence the small encampment lay,
Curling its wreathed smoke into the air.
She seemed a child of some sun-favored clime;
So still, so habited to warmth and rest;
And in my wayward musings on past time,
When my thought fills with treasured memories,
That image nearest borders on the blest
Creations of pure art that never dies.

Henry Alford [1810-1871)

FANNY

A SOUTHERN BLOSSOM

COME and see her as she stands,
Crimson roses in her hands;

And her eyes

Are as dark as Southern night,

Yet than Southern dawn more bright,

And a soft, alluring light

In them lies.

None deny if she beseech
With that pretty, liquid speech

Of the South.

All her consonants are slurred,
And the vowels are preferred;
There's a poem in each word
From that mouth.

Even Cupid is her slave;
Of her arrows, half he gave

Somebody's Child

345

Her one day

In a merry, playful hour.

Dowered with these and beauty's dower,

Strong indeed her magic power,'

So they say.

Venus, not to be outdone

By her generous little son,
Shaped the mouth

Very like to Cupid's bow.

Lack-a-day! Our North can show
No such lovely flowers as grow

In the South!

Anne Reeve Aldrich [1866-1892]

SOMEBODY'S CHILD

JUST a picture of Somebody's child,-
Sweet face set in golden hair,

Violet eyes, and cheeks of rose,
Rounded chin, with a dimple there,

Tender eyes where the shadows sleep,
Lit from within by a secret ray,—
Tender eyes that will shine like stars
When love and womanhood come this way!

Scarlet lips with a story to tell,—

Blessed be he who shall find it out,

Who shall learn the eyes' deep secret well,
And read the heart with never a doubt.

Then you will tremble, scarlet lips,

Then you will crimson, loveliest cheeks:
Eyes will brighten and blushes will burn.
When the one true lover bends and speaks.

But she's only a child now, as you see,
Only a child in her careless grace:
When Love and Womanhood come this way
Will anything sadden the flower-like face?

Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908]

EMILIA

HALFWAY up the Hemlock valley turnpike,
In the bend of Silver Water's arm,
Where the deer come trooping down at even,
Drink the cowslip pool, and fear no harm,
Dwells Emilia,

Flower of the fields of Camlet Farm.

Sitting sewing by the western window.
As the too brief mountain sunshine flies,
Hast thou seen a slender-shouldered figure
With a chestnut braid, Minerva-wise,
Round her temples,

Shadowing her gray, enchanted eyes?

When the freshets flood the Silver Water,

When the swallow flying northward braves Sleeting rains that sweep the birchen foothills Where the windflowers' pale plantation waves— (Fairy gardens

Springing from the dead leaves in their graves),—

Falls forgotten, then, Emilia's needle;

Ancient ballads, fleeting through her brain,
Sing the cuckoo and the English primrose,
Outdoors calling with a quaint refrain;
And a rainbow

Seems to brighten through the gusty rain.

Forth she goes, in some old dress and faded,
Fearless of the showery shifting wind;

Kilted are her skirts to clear the mosses,
And her bright braids in a 'kerchief pinned,
Younger sister

Of the damsel-errant Rosalind.

While she helps to serve the harvest supper
In the lantern-lighted village hall,
Moonlight rises on the burning woodland,
Echoes dwindle from the distant Fall.
Hark, Emilia!

In her ear the airy voices call.