Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, Treasure my lady's lightest footfall! -Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces,-- Robert Browning [1812-1889] TO MARGUERITE YES: in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, We mortal millions live alone. But when the moon their hollows lights, The nightingales divinely sing; O then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent! Parts of a single continent. Now round us spreads the watery plain- Who ordered that their longing's fire Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] SEPARATION STOP! not to me, at this bitter departing, Speak of the sure consolations of time! Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting, Longing But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature Me let no half-effaced memories cumber! 967 Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there: Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me, With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair? Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] LONGING COME to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth, Come to me in my dreams, and then 1 1 Matthew Arnold (1822-1888] No backward path; ah! no returning; No second crossing that ripple's flow: "Come to me now, for the west is burning; Come ere it darkens."-"Ah, no! ah, no!" Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching,- The loud beck drowns them: we walk, and weep. V A yellow moon in splendor drooping, A tired queen with her state oppressed, Low by rushes and swordgrass stooping, Lies she soft on the waves at rest. The desert heavens have felt her sadness; We two walk on in our grassy places On either marge of the moonlit flood, With the moon's own sadness in our faces, Where joy is withered, blossom and bud. VI A shady freshness, chafers whirring; A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds. Bare grassy slopes, where kids are tethered, A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver, Divided Broad and white, and polished as silver, On she goes under fruit-laden trees: Sunk in leafage cooeth the culver, And 'plaineth of love's disloyalties. Glitters the dew, and shines the river, And wave their hands for a mute farewell. VII A braver swell, a swifter sliding; The river hasteth, her banks recede. Stately prows are rising and bowing The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair, While, O my heart! as white sails shiver, } And clouds are passing, and banks stretch wide, Farther, farther; I see it, know it My eyes brim over, it melts away: Only my heart to my heart shall show it As I walk desolate day by day. VIII And yet I know past all doubting, truly,- And as I walk by the vast calm river, The awful river so dread to see, I say, "Thy breadth and thy depth forever 971 Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me." Jean Ingelow [1820-1897] MY PLAYMATE THE pines were dark on Ramoth hill, The blossoms drifted at our feet, For, more to me than birds or flowers, My playmate left her home, And took with her the laughing spring, The music and the bloom. She kissed the lips of kith and kin, She left us in the bloom of May: I walk, with noiseless feet, the round Of uneventful years; Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring She lives where all the golden year There haply with her jeweled hands No more the homespun lap wherein |