THIS is her picture as she was : Yet only this, of love's whole prize Remains; save what, in mournful guise, Takes counsel with my soul alone, Save what is secret and unknown, Below the earth, above the skies. In painting her I shrin'd her face Where you might think to find a din A deep, dim wood; and there she stands And such the pure line's gracious flow. And passing fair the type must seem, Unknown the presence and the dream. 'Tis she though of herself, alas! Less than her shadow on the grass, Or than her image in the stream. That day we met there, I and she, But when that hour my soul won strength For words whose silence wastes and kills, Dull raindrops smote us, and at length Thunder'd the heat within the hills. And there she hearken'd what I said, That now, even now, the sweet lips The empty pastures blind with rain. part To breathe the words of the sweet heart: And yet the earth is over her. Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray That makes the prison - depths more rude, The drip of water night and day Next day the memories of these things, Like leaves through which a bird has flown, Still vibrated with Love's warm wings; Till I must make them all my own She stood among the plants in bloom To feign the shadow of the trees. FROM "THE HOUSE OF LIFE: A SONNET-SEQUENCE" INTRODUCTORY A SONNET is a moment's monument, - To one dead, deathless hour. Look that it As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see Its flowering crest impearl'd and orient. Whether for tribute to the august appeals Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. LOVESIGHT WHEN do I see thee most, beloved one? Or when, in the dusk hours (we two alone), Nor image of thine eyes in any spring, How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perish'd leaves of 1 In the drawing Mary has left a procession of revellers, and is ascending by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she sees Christ. Her lover has followed her, and is trying to turn her back. - CONSIDER the sea's listless chime: Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time. No quiet, which is death's, it hath Listen alone beside the sea, Listen alone among the woods; Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark where the murmurs of throng'd men Surge and sink back and surge again, Still the one voice of wave and tree. Gather a shell from the strown beach A LITTLE WHILE A LITTLE while a little love The hour yet bears for thee and me Who have not drawn the veil to see If still our heaven be lit above. Thou merely, at the day's last sigh, Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone; And I have heard the night-wind ery And deem'd its speech mine own. A little while a little love The scattering autumn hoards for us Whose bower is not yet ruinous Nor quite unleav'd our songless grove. Only across the shaken boughs We hear the flood-tides seek the sea, And deep in both our hearts they rouse One wail for thee and me. A little while a little love May yet be ours who have not said The word it makes our eyes afraid To know that each is thinking of. Not yet the end: be our lips dumb In smiles a little season yet: I'll tell thee, when the end is come, How we may best forget. THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES TRANSLATION FROM FRANÇOIS VILLON, 1450 TELL me now in what hidden way is |