The Queen

Heart of my heart, we can not die!
Love triumphant in flower and tree,
Every life that laughs at the sky

Tells us nothing can cease to be;
One, we are one with a song to-day,

One with the clover that scents the wold, One with the Unknown, far away,

One with the stars, when earth grows old.'

Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,

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One with the clouds that are whirled o'er the lea,

One in many, O broken and blind,

One as the waves are at one with the sea!

Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,

One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
One, still one, while the world grows old.

Alfred Noyes [1880-1

THE QUEEN

He loves not well whose love is bold!
I would not have thee come too nigh:
The sun's gold would not seem pure gold
Unless the sun were in the sky:
To take him thence and chain him near
Would make his glory disappear.

He keeps his state,-keep thou in thine,
And shine upon me from afar!

So shall I bask in light divine,

That falls from love's own guiding star;
So shall thy eminence be high,
And so my passion shall not die;

But all my life shall reach its hands
Of lofty longing toward thy face,
And be as one who, speechless, stands
In rapture at some perfect grace!
My love, my hope, my all shall be
To look to heaven and look to thee!

Thy eyes shall be the heavenly lights,
Thy voice the gentle summer breeze,-
What time it sways, on moonlit nights,
The murmuring tops of leafy trees;
And I shall touch thy beauteous form
In June's red roses, rich and warm.

But thou thyself shall come not down
From that pure region far above;
But keep thy throne and wear thy crown,

Queen of my heart and queen of love!
A monarch in thy realm complete,

And I a monarch-at thy feet!

William Winter [1836-1917]

A LOVER'S ENVY

I ENVY every flower that blows
Beside the pathway where she goes,

And every bird that sings to her,
And every breeze that brings to her
The fragrance of the rose.

I envy every poet's rhyme

That moves her heart at eventime,

And every tree that wears for her

Its brightest bloom, and bears for her

The fruitage of its prime.

I envy every Southern night

That paves her path with moonbeams white,
And silvers all the leaves for her,

And in their shadow weaves for her
A dream of dear delight.

I envy none whose love requires

Of her a gift, a task that tires:

I only long to live to her,

I only ask to give to her

All that her heart desires.
Henry Van Dyke (1852-

"My Heart Shall Be Thy Garden"

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STAR SONG

WHEN Sunset flows into golden glows

And the breath of the night is
Love, find afar eve's eager star-
That is my thought of you.

new,

O tear-wet eye that scans the sky
Your lonely lattice through:
Choose any one, from sun to sun-

That is my thought of you.

And when you wake at the morning's break

To rival rose and dew,

The star that stays till the leaping rays—

That is my thought of you.

Ay, though by day they seem away

Beyond or cloud or blue,

From dawn to night unquenched their light

As are my thoughts of you.

Robert Underwood Johnson [1853

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“MY HEART SHALL BE THY GARDEN”

My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,
Into thy garden; thine be happy hours
Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,
From root to crowning petal, thine alone.
Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown
Up to the sky inclosed, with all its showers.

But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers
To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine

To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,
Sing one song only from our alder-trees,

My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,
Flit to the silent world and other summers,

With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

Alice Meynell [1853–

AT NIGHT

HOME, home from the horizon far and clear,
Hither the soft wings sweep;

Flocks of the memories of the day draw near

The dovecote doors of sleep.

Oh which are they that come through sweetest light Of all these homing birds?

Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight?

Your words to me, your words!

Alice Meynell [1853

SONG

SONG is so old,

Love is so new

Let me be still

And kneel to you.

Let me be still

And breathe no word,

Save what my warm blood

Sings unheard.

Let my warm blood

Sing low of you—

Song is so fair,

Love is so new!

Hermann Hagedorn [1882–

"ALL LAST NIGHT"

ALL last night I had quiet

In a fragrant dream and warm:

She had become my Sabbath,
And round my neck, her arm.

I knew the warmth in my dreaming;
The fragrance, I suppose,

Was her hair about me,

Or else she wore a rose.

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The Last Word

Her hair, I think; for likest
Woodruffe 'twas, when Spring
Loitering down wet woodways
Treads it sauntering.

No light, nor any speaking;
Fragrant only and warm.
Enough to know my lodging,

The white Sabbath of her arm.

Lascelles Abercrombie [1881

THE LAST WORD

WHEN I have folded up this tent
And laid the soiled thing by,
I shall go forth 'neath different stars,
Under an unknown sky.

And yet whatever house I find
Beneath the grass or snow
Will ne'er be tenantless of love
Or lack the face I know.

O lips-wild roses wet with rain!
Blown hair of drifted brown!
O passionate eyes! O panting heart-
When in that colder town

I lie, the one inhabitant,

My hands across my breast,
How warm through all eternity
The summer of my rest!

To each frail root beneath the ground
That thrusts its flower above,

I shall impart a fiercer sap-
I who have known your love!

And growing things will lean to me
To learn what love hath won,
Till I shall whisper to the dust
That secret of the Sun.

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