Lying in the Grass.

BETWEEN two golden tufts of summer grass,
I see the world through hot air as through glass,
And by my face sweet lights and colours pass.

Before me, dark against the fading sky,
I watch three mowers, moving as I lie:
With brawny arms they sweep in harmony.

Brown English faces by the sun burnt red,
Rich glowing colour on bare throat and head,-
My heart would leap to watch them were I dead!

And in my strong young living as I lie,
I seem to move with them in harmony,
A fourth is mowing, and that fourth am I.

The music of the scythes that glide and leap,
The young men whistling as their great arms sweep,
And all the perfume and sweet sense of sleep,

The weary butterflies that droop their wings,
The dreamy nightingale that hardly sings,
And all the lassitude of happy things,

Are mingling with the warm and pulsing blood
That gushes through my veins a languid flood,
And feeds my spirit as the sap a bud.

Behind the mowers, on the amber air,
A dark-green beech-wood rises still and fair,
A white path winding up it like a stair.

And see that girl, with pitcher on her head,
And clean white apron on her gown of red,
Her evensong of love is but half said:

She waits the youngest mower.

Now he goes;

Her cheeks are redder than a wild blush-rose:
They climb up where the deepest shadows close.

But though they pass, and vanish, I am there.
I watch his rough hands meet beneath her hair,
Their broken speech sounds sweet to me like prayer.

Ah! now the rosy children come to play,
And romp and struggle with the new-mown hay;
Their clear high voices sound from far away.

They know so little why the world is sad,

They dig themselves warm graves and yet are glad;
Their muffled screams and laughter make me mad!

I long to go and play among them there;
Unseen, like wind, to take them by the hair,
And gently make their rosy cheeks more fair.

The happy children! full of frank surprise,
And sudden whims and innocent ecstacies;
What godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes!

No wonder round those urns of mingled clays
That Tuscan potters fashioned in old days,
And coloured like the torrid earth ablaze,

We find the little gods and loves portrayed,
Through ancient forests wandering undismayed,
And fluting hymns of pleasure unafraid.

They knew, as I do now, what keen delight
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
Of little children playing in his sight;

What pure sweet pleasure, and what sacred love,
Comes drifting down upon us from above,

In watching how their limbs and features move.

I do not hunger for a well-stored mind,

I only wish to live my life, and find
My heart in unison with all mankind.

My life is like the single dewy star
That trembles on the horizon's primrose-bar,—
A microcosm where all things living are.

And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death
Should come behind and take away my breath,
I should not rise as one who sorroweth ;

For I should pass, but all the world would be
Full of desire and young delight and glee,

And why should men be sad through loss of me?

The light is flying; in the silver-blue

The young moon shines from her bright window through:

The mowers are all gone, and I

go too.

The Monastery Garden.

DEEP in the hollow of the cliffs it lay;
Above, the mountain shouted to the sun;
A thousand riotous runlets streamed away,
And sped the merry mill-wheels one by one.
It slept within the silence and the shade;
Above, from cleft to cleft, in glittering light,
The sun-burned millers and their children made
A jocund noise of labour and delight.

Its pensive terrace scarcely knew the sun,

But watched the gleam along the belfry-tower, And, scarcely sighing when the day was done, Rejoiced as little at the morning-hour.

Thither I came at twilight; all day long

My feet had tracked the river, a line of foam; The plaintive angelus rose like a song,

I hailed the great white house and named it

"home."

But all was bleak and melancholy there;

Beneath the barren wall the vine-leaves lay; The stony pathway broadened chill and bare, The moaning torrent thundered far away.

Beneath the threadbare branches of the vine,—

A shivering vine that yearned for summer lands,

A marble virgin from her hollow shrine

Held out the solace of her wasted hands.

So mild she was, so cold, so woe-begone,-
The tears all frozen in her carven eyes,-
She seemed a monument of tender moan,
The statue of a grief that never dies.

Behind her, on a sweep of lowlier ground,
Girt by a hedge of yew, the garden lay;
And she, as though by some magician bound,
Stood vainly yearning for the golden day.

I turned the creaking latch of the frail gate,
And stood within the pale monks' garden-plot;
Harsh herbs were there, and shrubs disconsolate,
But daisies and the generous rose were not.

An autumn sadness on that garden fed;

Prim box and cypress alleys quenched the light; Gray tufts of rue to sprinkle o'er the dead,

And thrift was there, and hueless aconite.

Each monk had trimmed and fashioned one pale square,

But filled it always with the same sad herbs; No perfume floats within that sombre air,

Those ashen leaves no boisterous bee disturbs.

And o'er that scentless garden all day long
The marble Virgin spreads her stainless hands;
Untinged by rosy light at evensong,

And unillumed at matins, cold she stands.

Her consolation had no balm for me;

To me she seemed like one poor faltering prayer
Breathed by a prisoned soul that sighs to see
Life pass her narrow cell and leave her there.