(From Hawthorn and Lavender)
'HE night dislimns, and breaks
Like snows slow thawn;
An evil wind awakes
On lea and lawn ;
The low East quakes; and hark!
Out of the kindless dark,
A fierce protesting lark,
High in the horror of dawn!
A shivering streak of light,
A scurry of rain ;
Bleak day from bleaker night
Creeps pinched and fain;
The old gloom thins and dies,
And in the wretched skies
A new gloom, sick to rise,
Sprawls like a thing in pain.
And yet what matter-say -
The shuddering trees,
The Easter stricken day,
The sodden leas?
The good bird, wing and wing
With Time, finds heart to sing,
As he were hastening
The swallow o'er the seas.
In Three Days
(From Dramatic Lyrics)
So, I shall see her in three days
And just one night, but nights are short,
Then two long hours, and that is morn.
See how I come, unchanged, unworn!
Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
How fresh the splinters keep and fine,-
Only a touch and we combine!
Too long, this time of year, the days!
But nights, at least the nights are short.
As night shows where her one moon is,
A hand's breadth of pure light and bliss,
So life's night gave my lady birth
And my eyes hold her! What is worth
The rest of heaven, the rest of earth.
O loaded curls, release your store
Of warmth and scent, as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Outbreaking into fiery sparks,
When under curl and curl I pried
After the warmth and scent inside,
Thro' lights and darks how manifold-
The dark inspired, the light controlled !
As early art embrowns the gold.
What great fear, should one say,
That change the world might change as well Your fortune; and if joy delays,
Be happy that no worse befell! "
What small fear, if another says,
66 Three days and one short night beside
May throw no shadow on your ways;
But years must teem with change untried,
With chance not easily defied,
With an end somewhere undescried."
No fear!-or if a fear be born
This minute, it dies out in scorn.
Fear! I shall see her in three days
And one night; now the nights are short,
Then just two hours, and that is morn.
Youth's Agitations
(From Early Poems)
WHEN I shall be divorced, some ten years
From this poor present self which I am now;
When youth has done its tedious vain expense
Of passions that for ever ebb and flow;
Shall I not joy youth's heats are left behind,
And breathe more happy in an even clime?
Ah no, for then I shall begin to find
A thousand virtues in this hated time!
Then shall I wish its agitations back,
And all its thwarting currents of desire;
Then shall I praise the heat which then I lack,
And call this hurrying fever generous fire;
And sigh that only one thing has been lent
To youth and age in common-discontent.
SK me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose ;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven doth prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale, when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars 'light,
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
His Discourse with Cupid (From Underwoods)
NOBLEST Charis, you that are
Both my fortune and my star!
And do govern more my blood,
Than the various moon the flood!
Hear, what late discourse of you,
Love and I have had; and true.
'Mongst my Muses finding me,
Where he chanc'd your name to see
Set, and to this softer strain :
Sure said he if I have brain,
This, here sung, can be no other
By description but my mother!
So hath Homer prais'd her hair;
So Anacreon drawn the air
Of her face, and made to rise
Just about her sparkling eyes,
Both her brows, bent like my bow;
By her looks I do her know,
Which you call my
shafts. And see!
Such my mother's blushes be,
As the bath your verse discloses
In her cheeks, of milk and roses;
Such as oft I wanton in:
And above her even chin,
Have you placed the bank of kisses,
Where you say men gather blisses,
Ripened with a breath more sweet
Than when flowers and west winds meet?
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