No! Thou didst wither up my flowering youth,
If blameless, still the bearer of a blight;
The unconscious agent of the deadliest ruth
That human heart hath riven;
Teaching me scorn of my own spirit's truth;
Holding, not me, but that fond worship light
Which link my soul to Heaven.
No, no!-For me the weakest heart before
One so untouch'd by tenderness as thine;
Angels have enter'd through the frail tent door
That pass the palace now-
And HE who spake the words, "Go, sin no more,"
Mid human passions saw the spark divine,
But not in such as thou!
THE stag leaps free in the forest's heart,
But thy step is lighter, my love, my bride!
Light as the quick-footed breezes that part
The plumy ferns on the mountain-side.
Swift as the zephyrs that come and pass
O'er the waveless lake and the billowy grass;
I hear thy voice where the white spray gleams,
In the one-toned bells of the rippled streams,
In the shivering boughs of the aspen tree,
In the wind that stirreth the silvery pine,
In the shell that moans of the distant sea-
Never was voice so sweet as thine!
Never a sound through the evening dim
Came half so soft as thy vesper hymn.
I have followed fast from the lark's low nest
Thy freezy step to the mountain crest;
The livelong day I have wandered on,
Till the stars were up, the twilight gone;
Ever unwearied where thou has roved,
Fairest, and purest, and best beloved!
I have felt thy kiss in the leafy aisle,
And thy breath astir in my waving hair,
I have met the light of thy haunting smile
In the deep, still woods, and the sunny air, For thou lookest down from the bending skies, And the earth is glad with thy laughing eyes.
When my heart is sad and my pulse beats low,
Whose touch so light on my burning brow?
Who cometh in dreams to my midnight sleep?
Who bendeth over my noonday rest?
Who singeth me songs in the forest deep,
Laying my head to her gentle breast?
When life grows dim to my weary eye,
When joy departeth and sorrow is nigh,
Who, 'neath the track of the stars, save thec,
Speaketh or singeth of hope to me?
There comes a time when the morn shall rise,
Yet charm no smile to thy filmed eyes:
There comes a time when thou liest low,
With the roses dead on thy frozen brow,
With a pall hung over thy tranced rest,
And the pulse asleep in thy silent breast.
There shall come a dirge through the valleys drear,
And a white-robed priest to thine icy bier:
His lip is cold, but his dim eyes weep,
And he maketh thy grave where the snow falls deep.
Woe is me when I watch and pray
For the lightest tread of thy coming foot,
For the softest note of thy summer lay,
For the faintest chord of thy vine-strung lute!
Woe is me when the storms sweep by,
And the mocking winds are my sole reply!
THINK OF ME, DEAREST.
THINK of me, dearest, when the day is breaking
Away from the sable chains of night,
When the sun, his ocean-couch forsaking,
Like a giant first in his strength awaking,
Is flinging abroad his limbs of light;
As the breeze that first travels with morning forth,
Giving life to her steps o'er the quickening earth-
As the dream that has cheated my soul through the night.
Let me in thy thoughts come fresh with the light.
Think of me, dearest, when the day is sinking
In the soft embrace of the twilight gray,
When the starry eyes of heaven are winking,
And the weary flowers their tears are drinking,
As they start like gems on the moon-touch'd spray.
Let me come warm in thy thoughts at eve,
As the glowing track which the sunbeams leave,
When they, blushing, tremble along the deep,
While stealing away to their place of sleep.
Think of me, dearest, when round thee smiling
Are eyes that melt while they gaze on thee;
When words are winning and looks are wiling,
And those words and looks, of others, beguiling
Thy fluttering heart from love and me.
Let me come true in thy thoughts in that hour;
Let my trust and my faith-my devotion-have power,
When all that can lure to thy young soul is nearest,
To summon each truant thought back to me, dearest.
LOVE AND DARING.
THOU darest not love me! thou canst only see
The great gulf set between us: hadst thou love,
'Twould bear thee o'er it on a wing of fire!
Wilt put from thy faint lip the mantling cup,
The draught thou'st prayed for with divinest thirst,
For fear a poison in the chalice lurks?
Wilt thout be barred from thy soul's heritage,
The power, the rapture, and the crown of life,
By the poor guard of danger set about it?
I tell thee that the richest flowers of heaven
Bloom on the brink of darkness. Thou hast marked How sweetly o'er the beetling precipice
Hangs the young June-rose with its crimson heart:
And wouldst not sooner peril life to win
That royal flower, that thou might est proudly wear
The trophy on thy breast, than idly pluck
A thousand meek-raced daisies by the way?
How dost thou shudder at Love's gentle tones,
As though a serpent's hiss were in thine ear;
Albeit thy heart throbs echo to each word,
Why wilt not rest, oh weary wanderer,
Upon the couch of flowers Love spreads for thee,
On banks of sunshine ?-voices silver-toned
Shall lull thy soul with strange, wild harmonies,
Rock thee to sleep upon the waves of song;
Hope shall watch o'er thee with her breath of drears;
Joy hover near, impatient for thy waking—
Her quick wind glancing through the fragrant air.
Why dost thou pause hard by the rose-wreathed gate? Why turn thee from the paradise of youth,
Where Love's immortal summer blooms and glows,
And wrap thyself in coldness as a shroud?
Perchance, 'tis well for thee-yet does the flame
That glows with heat intense and mounts toward heaven,
As fitly emblem holiest purity
As the still snow-wreath on the mountain's brow.
Thou darest not say, "I love," and yet thou lovest,
And think'st to crush the mighty yearning down,
That in thy spirit shall upspring for ever!
Twined with thy soul, it lived in thy first thoughts,
It haunted with strange dreams thy boyish years,
And coloured with its deep, empurpled hue,
The passionate aspirations of thy youth.
Go, take from June her roses; from her streams
The bubbling fountain-springs; from life take love,
Thou hast its all of sweetness, bloom, and strength.
There is a grandeur in the soul that dares
To live out all the life God lit within;
That battles with the passion hand to hand,
And wears no mail, and hides behind no shield;
That plucks its joy in the shadow of Death's wing,
That drains with one deep draught the wine of life,
And that with fearless foot and heaven-turned eye
May stand upon a dizzy precipice,
High o'er the abyss of ruin, and not fall!
WE parted in sadness, but spoke not of parting;
We talk'd not of hopes that we both must resign,
I saw not her eyes, but one tear-drop starting,
Fell down on her hand as it trembled in mine:
Each felt that the past we could never recover,
Each felt that the future no hope could restore;
She shudder'd at wringing the heart of her lover,
I dared not say I must meet her no more.
Long years have gone by, and the spring-time smiles ever
As o'er our young loves it first smiled in their birth,
Long years have gone by, yet that parting, O! never
Can it be forgotten by either on earth.
The note of each wild bird that carols toward heaven, Must tell her of sweet winged hopes that were mine, And the dew that steals over each blossom at even, Tells me of the tear-drop that wept their decline.
THOU wert as a lake that lieth
In a bright and sunny way;
I was a bird that flieth
O'er it on a pleasant day;
When I look'd upon thy features,.
Presence then some feeling lent;
But thou knowest, most false of creatures,
With thy form thy image went.
With a kiss my vow was greeted,
As I knelt before thy shrine;
But I saw that kiss repeated
On another lip than mine;
And a solemn vow was spoken
That thy heart should not be changed;
But that binding voy was broken,
And thy spirit was estranged..
I could blame thee for awaking
Thoughts the world will but deride;
Calling out and then forsaking
Flowers the winter wind will chide;,
Guiling to the mighty ocean
Barks that tremble by the shore;.
But I hush the sad emotion,
And I will punish thee no more..
"La vie est un sommeil l'amour en est la rêve."
A SAD, sweet dream! it fell upon my soul
When song and thought first woke their echoes there, Swaying my spirit to its wild control,
And with the shadow of a fond despair,
fountain of my young life's stream, will, and yet I know 'tis but a dream.
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