Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;

In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her check was pale and thinner than should be for one so

young, And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to

me, Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light, As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turned her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighsAll the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin ?" weeping, "I have loved thee long.

Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring, And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly

dew From the nations' airy navies grap

pling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

So I triumphed ere my passion sweeping through me left me dry,

Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all

things here are out of joint: Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a

lion, creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks

behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not through the ages

one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the

suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys, Though the deep heat of existence beat forever like a boy's? Knowledge comes, but wisdom lin

gers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,

Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn, They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a mouldered string? I am shamed through all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain

Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, matched with mine,

Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starred; I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit - there to wander far away,

On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms

in cluster, knots of Paradise. Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossomed bower, hangs the heavy-fruited treeSummer isles of Eden lying in darkpurple spheres of sea.

« ÎnapoiContinuă »