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!"

`IME goes, you say? Ah no!

ΤΙΜ

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

66 rose and "

To praise your
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!

snow

VTO A GREEK GIRL

WITH breath of thyme and bees that hum,

WITH

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!

sod

How sweet with you on some green
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