CONTENT

THOUGH singing but the shy and sweet
Untrod by multitudes of feet,

Songs bounded by the brook and wheat,
I have not failed in this,

The only lure my woodland note,
To win all England's whitest throat!
O bards in gold and fire who wrote,

Be yours all other bliss!

Norman Gale [1862

CHE SARA SARA

PREACH Wisdom unto him who understands!
When there's such lovely longing in thine eyes,
And such a pulse in thy small clinging hands,
What is the good of being great or wise?

What is the good of beating up the dust

On the world's highway, vexed with droughty heat? Oh, I grow fatalist—what must be must,

Seeing that thou, beloved, art so sweet!

Victor Plarr [1863

"BID ADIEU TO GIRLISH DAYS"

BID adieu, adieu, adieu,

Bid adieu to girlish days,

Happy Love is come to woo

Thee and woo thy girlish ways—
The zone that doth become thee fair,
The snood upon thy yellow hair.

When thou hast heard his name upon
The bugles of the cherubim,
Begin thou softly to unzone

Thy girlish bosom unto him,
And softly to undo the snood
That is the sign of maidenhood.

James Joyce [18

Advice to a Lover

1137

TO F. C.

FAST falls the snow, O lady mine,
Sprinkling the lawn with crystals fine,
But by the gods we won't repine
While we're together,

We'll chat and rhyme, and kiss and dine,
Defying weather.

So stir the fire and pour the wine,
And let those sea-green eyes divine
Pour their love-madness into mine:
I don't care whether

'Tis snow or sun or rain or shine
If we're together.

Mortimer Collins [1827-1876]

SPRING PASSION

BLUE sky, green fields, and lazy yellow sun!
Why should I hunger for the burning South,
Where beauty needs no travail to be won,

Now I may kiss her pure impassioned mouth?

Winds rippling with the rich delight of spring!
Why should I yearn for myriad-colored skies,
Lit by auroral suns, when I may sing

The flame and rapture of her starry eyes?

Oh, song of birds, and flowers fair to see!
Why should I thirst for far-off Eden-isles,

When I may hear her discourse melody,
And bask, a dreamer, in her dreamy smiles?
Joel Elias Spingarn [1875-

ADVICE TO A LOVER

Oн, if you love her,

Show her the best of you;

So will you move her

To bear with the rest of you.

Coldness and jealousy

Cannot but seem to her Signs that a tempest lurks

Where was sunbeam to her. Patience and tenderness

Still will awake in her

Hopes of new sunshine,

Though the storm break for her; Love, she will know, for her,

Like the blue firmament,

Under the tempest lies

Gentle and permanent.

Nor will she ever

Gentleness find the less When the storm overblown

Leaveth clear kindliness.

Deal with her tenderly,

Skylike above her,

Smile on her waywardness,

THEY stood above the world,

In a world apart;

And she dropped her happy eyes,

And stilled the throbbing pulses

Of her happy heart.

And the moonlight fell above her,

Her secret to discover;

And the moonbeams kissed her hair,

As though no human lover

Had laid his kisses there.

"Look up, brown eyes," he said,

"And answer mine;

Lift up those silken fringes

That hide a happy light

Almost divine."

Love

The jealous moonlight drifted
To the finger half-uplifted,

Where shone the opal ring

Where the colors danced and shifted
On the pretty, changeful thing.

Just the old, old story

Of light and shade, Love like the opal tender, Like it may be to vary— May be to fade.

Just the old tender story,

Just a glimpse of morning glory
In an earthly Paradise,
With shadowy reflections

In a pair of sweet brown eyes.

Brown eyes a man might well
Be proud to win!

Open to hold his image,
Shut under silken lashes,
Only to shut him in.
O glad eyes, look together,
For life's dark, stormy weather

Grows to a fairer thing

When young eyes look upon it

Through a slender wedding ring.

1139

Richard Doddridge Blackmore [1825-1900]

LOVE

ALL thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame.

Oft in my waking dreams do I
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, Had blended with the lights of eve; And she was there, my hope, my joy, My own dear Genevieve!

She leaned against the armèd man,
The statue of the armèd Knight;
She stood and listened to my lay,
Amid the lingering light.

Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best whene'er I sing

The songs that make her grieve.

I played a soft and doleful air;
I sang an old and moving story-
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.

I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love,
Interpreted my own.

She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;

And she forgave me, that I gazed

Too fondly on her face!