Puslapio vaizdai
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What wonder that she is fair?

What wonder that she is sweet? The treasures of earth and air

Lie at her dainty feet;

The choicest fare is hers,

Her cup is brimmed with wine;

Rich are her emerald robes,

And her bed is soft and fine.

She need not lift her head

Even to sip the dew;

No rude touch makes her shrink

The whole long summer through.

Her servants do her will;

They come at her beck and call. Oh, rare is life in my lady's bowers Inside of the garden wall

II.

THE GARDEN ROSE.

The garden path runs east,

And the garden path runs west; There's a tree by the garden gate, And a little bird in a nest.

It sings and sings and sings!
Does the bird, I wonder, know

How, over the garden wall,

The bright days come and go?

The garden path runs north,

And the garden path runs south; The brown bee hums in the sun,

And kisses the lily's mouth;

But it flies away ere long

To the birch-tree dark and tall. What do you find, O brown bee, Over the garden wall?

With ruff and farthingale,
Under the gardener's eye,
In trimmest guise I stand-
Oh, who so fine as I?

But even the light wind knows
That it may not play with me,
Nor touch my beautiful lips

With a wild caress and free.

Oh, straight is the garden path, And smooth is the garden bed, Where never an idle weed

Dares lift its careless head.

But I know outside the wall

They gather, a merry throng; They dance and flutter and sing,— And I listen all day long.

The Brier Rose swings outside;
Sometimes she climbs so high
I can see her sweet pink face
Against the blue of the sky.
What wonder that she is fair,

Whom no strait bonds enthrall? Oh, rare is life to the Brier Rose,

Outside of the garden wall!

Edward Dowden.

SWALLOWS.

Wide fields of air left luminous,
Though now the uplands comprehend
How the sun's loss is ultimate :

The silence grows; but still to us

From yon air-winnowing breasts elate The tiny shrieks of glee descend.

Deft wings, each moment is resigned
Some touch of day, some pulse of light,
While yet in poised, delicious curve,
Ecstatic doublings down the wind,

Light dash and dip and sidelong swerve,
You try each dainty trick of flight.

Will not your airy glee relent

At all? The aimless frolic cease?
Know ye no touch of quelling pain,
Nor joy's more strict admonishment,

No tender awe at daylight's wane,
Ye slaves of delicate caprice?

Hush, once again that cry intense!
High-venturing spirits, have your will!
Urge the last freak, prolong your glee,
Keen voyagers, while still the immense
Sea-spaces haunt your memory,

With zests and pangs ineffable.

Not in the sunshine of old woods
Ye won your warrant to be gay
By duteous, sweet observances,

Who dared through darkening solitudes,
And 'mid the hiss of alien seas,

The larger ordinance obey.

THE VENUS OF MELOS.

Goddess, or woman nobler than the God,
No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas

Shifting and circling past their Cyclades

Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, was trod
First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad
Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees,
And flowers like queens, and a full year's increase,
Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod.
So thy victorious fairness, unallied

To bitter things or barren, doth bestow

And not exact; so thou art calm and wise;

Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow
Like Plutarch's men by standing at thy side,
And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes!

AWAKENING.

With brain o'erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around,—
And all forms mean,-to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life's common road.
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, an odor, a flower crowned

With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,
And we awake. O joy and deep amaze !
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,
We hear the voices of the morning seas,
And earnest prophesyings in the land,

While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.

BROTHER DEATH.

When thou wouldst have me go with thee, O Death, Over the utmost verge, to the dim place,

Practise upon me with no amorous grace

Of fawning lips, and words of delicate breath,

And curious music thy lute uttereth;

Nor think for me there must be sought-out ways
Of cloud and terror; have we many days
Sojourned together, and is this thy faith?
Nay, be there plainness 'twixt us; come to me
Even as thou art, O brother of my soul;

Hold thy hand out and I will place mine there;
I trust thy mouth's inscrutable irony,

And dare to lay my forehead where the whole
Shadow lies deep of thy purpureal hair.

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