Love has only now.We can swear it, we who standIn Love’s present, hand in hand,Thou and I, dear, I and thou.By and by and Long ago;Last month’s buds, next winter’s snow;Love has only now.Do we wot of rathe or sereIn Love’s boundless summer year,Thou and I, dear, I and thou?Suns that rose and suns to…
And ‘Sweetest sweetness is ended soon,’And ‘Never heed for the thorn.’‘Love’s hour passes away,’White rose breathed in my ear;Red rose whispered ‘No need to fear;The day is enough for day.’Shall I heed white or red?Shall I heed both aright?Sighing and laughing, red and white,‘Tis ‘Love her’ they both have said.
But, singing done with, loving’s done with quite,The autumn sunders every twittering two.And I’d not have love make too much adoWith sweet parades of fondness and delight,Lest iterant wont should make caresses trite,Love-names mere cuckoo ousters of the true.Oh heart can hear heart’s sense in senseless nought,And heart that’s sure of heart has little speech.What…
And pour its fullness into life at last.’But when the rain was done,But when dawn sparkled through unclouded air,She was not there.The lark said ‘Let but winter be away,And blossoms come, and light, and I will soar,And lose the earth, and be the voice of day.’But when the snows were o’er,But when spring broke in…
A waste where blow-seeds spring and growThen die because the soil is spent,And leave no token they were there;A soddened mere where marsh-lights gleam,But no star sees the ray it lentBecause of her despoiled and bare.What then? she did a wrong unmeant.Leave me my dream.Tell me no more. I will not know.My life, if she…
As new-come travellers from a world we knewWake every while some image of their land,So these whose buds our woodland breezes fannedBring to my room the meadow where they blew,The brook-side cliff, the elms where wood-doves coo–And every flower is dearer for her hand.Oh blossoms of the paths she loves to tread,Some grace of her…
and, sigh or scold, and, argue or intreat,what have you done but waste your part of lifeon impotent fool’s battles with the winds,that will blow as they list in spite of you?Fie, I am weary of your pettish griefsagainst the world that’s given, like a childwho whines and pules because his bread’s not cake,because the…
‘Twas sad; yet sadness has its morrow;Blue skies succeed skies overcast:Why should grief last?Something that’s passing, something dying.Well, weep one’s fill,Spend grief’s sweet courtesy, go sighing;But violets break from snow-time’s chill:Who can mourn still?Aye, let me pass. No life will miss meSave few first days.A shudder, stooping down to kiss me,A little love and tardy…
One love only to be given.Star that gathers all stars’ gloryRose all sweetness of the rest;Love that is all life’s glad story.
Seeds of a lily with blood-red coreBreathing of myrrh and of giroflore:Where winds drop them there must they lie,Living or dying.Some to the garden, some to the wall,Fluttering, falling;Some to the river, some to earth:Those that reach the right soil get birth;None of the rest have lived at all.—Whose voice is calling:‘Here is soil for…
