Let not love pursue her,

But conceive her free

Where the bright drops be

doom

With ineffectual plaint as from a tomb.

On the hills, and no longer rue her!

FROM "A LOVE-TRILOGY"

I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove, That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love,

breathing low that I sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,

That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,

That ye sing in his ears of the joy that forever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair, That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,

A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire, Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,

That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

I go like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way

To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,

The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep, My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep.

WHY will you haunt me unawares,
And walk into my sleep,
Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares,
Where long-dried perfume scents the airs,
While ghosts of sorrow creep,
Where on Hope's rained altar-stairs,
With ineffectual beams,
The Moon of Memory coldly glares
Upon the land of dreams?

My yearning eyes were fain to look
Upon your hidden face;

Their love, alas! you could not brook,
But in your own you mutely took

My hand, and for a space

You wrung it till I throbbed and shook,
And woke with wildest moan
And wet face channelled like a brook
With your tears or my own.

Now they exchange averted sighs
Or stand and marry silent eyes.

And he to her a hero is
And sweeter she than primroses;
Their common silence dearer far
Than nightingale and mavis are.

Now when they sever wedded hands,
Joy trembles in their bosom-strands,
And lovely laughter leaps and falls
Upon their lips in madrigals.

TO N. V. DE G. S.

THE unfathomable sea, and time, and tears, The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings

Dispart us; and the river of events
Has, for an age of years, to east and west
More widely borne our cradles. Thou to

me

Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn Descry a land far off and know not which. So I approach uncertain; so I cruise Round thy mysterious islet, and behold Surf and great mountains and loud riverbars,

And from the shore hear inland voices call. Strange is the seaman's heart; he hopes, he fears;

Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast;

Last, his rent sail refits, and to the deep
His shattered prow uncomforted puts back
Yet as he goes he ponders at the helm
Of that bright island; where he feared to
touch,

His spirit readventures; and for years, Where by his wife he slumbers safe at home,

Thoughts of that land revisit him; he sees The eternal mountains beckon, and awakes Yearning for that far home that might have been.

IN THE STATES

WITH half a heart I wander here
As from an age gone by,

A brother-yet though young in years,
An elder brother, I.

You speak another tongue than mine, Though both were English born.

HEATHER ALE: A GALLOWAY LEGEND

FROM the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,

He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain

He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.

Summer came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
Was none alive to tell.