But hear, before thou speak!

Withhold, I pray, the vain behest

O learn and understand

That 'gainst the wrongs himself did wreak Love sought her aid; until her shadowy cheek And eyes beseeching gave command; And compassed in her close compassionate hand My heart must burn and speak.

For then at last we spoke

What eyes so oft had told to eyes

Through that long-lingering silence whose halfsighs

Alone the buried secret broke,

Which with snatched hands and lips' reverberate stroke

Then from the heart did rise.

But she is far away

Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door, The wind-stirred robe of roseate gray And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day When we shall meet once more.

Dark as thy blinded wave

When brimming midnight floods the glenBright as the laughter of thy runnels when The dawn yields all the light they crave; Even so these hours to wound and that to save Are sisters in Love's ken.

Oh sweet her bending grace

Then when I kneel beside her feet;

And sweet her eyes' o'erhanging heaven; and

sweet

The gathering folds of her embrace; And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face When breaths and tears shall meet!

Beneath her sheltering hair,

In the warm silence near her breast, Our kisses and our sobs shall sink to rest; As in some still trance made aware That day and night have wrought to fulness there,

And Love has built our nest.

And as in the dim grove,

When the rains cease that hushed them long, 'Mid glistening boughs the song-birds wake to

song

So from our hearts deep-shrined in love,

Oh passing sweet and dear,
Then when the worshipped form and face
Are felt at length in darkling close embrace;
Round which so oft the sun shone clear,
With mocking light and pitiless atmosphere,
In many an hour and place.

Ah me! with what proud growth
Shall that hour's thirsting race be run;
While, for each several sweetness still begun
Afresh, endures love's endless drouth:
Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes,
sweet mouth,

Each singly wooed and won.

Yet most with the sweet soul Shall love's espousals then be knit; What time the governing cloud sheds peace

from it

O'er tremulous wings that touch the goal, And on the unmeasured height of Love's control The lustral fires are lit.

Therefore, when breast and cheek
Now part, from long embraces free-
Each on the other gazing shall but see
A self that has no need to speak;

All things unsought, yet nothing more to seek-
One love in unity.

O water wandering pastAlbeit to thee I speak this thing, O water, thou that wanderest whispering, Thou keep'st thy counsel to the last. What spell upon thy bosom should Love cast, Its secret thence to wring?

Nay, must thou hear the tale

Of the past days-the heavy debt
Of life that obdurate time withholds-ere yet
To win thine ear these prayers prevail,
And by thy voice Love's self with high All-hail
Yield up the amulet?

How should all this be told?-
All the sad sum of wayworn days-
Heart's anguish in the impenetrable maze;
And on the waste uncolored wold
The visible burthen of the sun grown cold
And the moon's laboring gaze?

Alas! shall hope be nursed
On life's all-succoring breast in vain,
And made so perfect only to be slain?

Or shall not rather the sweet thirst

Even yet rejoice the heart with warmth dispersed And strength grown fair again?

Stands it not by the door-
Love's Hour-till she and I shall meet;
With bodiless form and unapparent feet
That cast no shadow yet before,

Though round its head the dawn begins to pour
The breath that makes day sweet?

Its eyes invisible

Watch till the dial's thin-thrown shade Be born-yea, till the journeying line be laid Upon the point that wakes the spell, And there in lovelier light than tongue can tell Its presence stand arrayed.

O soul-sequestered face

Far off-oh were that night but now!
So even beside that stream even I and thou

Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace
And in the zone of that supreme embrace
Bind aching breast and brow.

O water whispering

Still through the dark into mine earsAs with mine eyes, is it not now with hers?— Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring, Wan water, wandering water weltering, This hidden tide of tears.

A NEW YEAR'S BURDEN.

ALONG the grass sweet airs are blown
Our way this day in Spring.

Of all the songs that we have known
Now which one shall we sing?

Not that, my love, ah no!-
Not this, my love? why, so!-

Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.

The grove is all a pale frail mist,

The new year sucks the sun. Of all the kisses that we kissed Now which shall be the one?

Not that, my love, ah no!— Not this, my love?-heigh-ho For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!

The branches cross above our eyes,

The skies are in a net:

And what's the thing beneath the skies

We two would most forget?

Not birth, my love, no, no

Not death, my love, no, noThe love once ours, but ours long hours ago.

LOVE-LILY.

BETWEEN the hands, between the brows,
Between the lips of Love-Lily,

A spirit is born whose birth endows

My blood with fire to burn through me;
Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
At whose least touch my color flies,

And whom my life grows faint to hear.
Within the voice, within the heart,

Within the mind of Love-Lily, A spirit is born who lifts apart

His tremulous wings and looks at me; Who on my mouth his finger lays,

And shows, while whispering lutes confer, That Eden of Love's watered ways

Whose winds and spirits worship her.

Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
Kisses and words of Love-Lily-
Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
Till riotous longing rest in me!

Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
But find in her its gracious goal,

Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought,
Nor Love her body from her soul.

A LITTLE WHILE.

A LITTLE While a little love

The hour yet bears for thee and me Who have not drawn the veil to see If still our heaven be lit above. Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,

Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone; And I have heard the night-wind cry, And deemed its speech mine own.

A little while a little love

The scattering autumn hoards for us Whose bower is not yet ruinous, Nor quite unleaved our songless grove. Only across the shaken boughs

We hear the flood-tides seek the sea, And deep in both our hearts they rouse One wail for thee and me.

A little while a little love

May yet be ours who have not said The word it makes our eyes afraid To know that each is thinking of. Not yet the end: be our lips dumb In smiles a little season yet: I'll tell thee, when the end is come, How we may best forget.

THE SEA-LIMITS.

CONSIDER the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible-
The murmur of the earth's own shell
Secret continuance sublime

Is the sea's end: our sight may pass No furlong further. Since time was, This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death's-it hath

The mournfulness of ancient life, Enduring always at dull strife. As the world's heart of rest and wrath, Its painful pulse is in the sands.

Last utterly, the whole sky stands, Gray and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,

603

Listen alone among the woods; Those voices of twin solitudes Shall have one sound alike to thee: Hark where the murmurs of thronged men, Surge and sink back and surge againStill the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not any thing but what thou art :
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

SONNETS.

O THOU who at Love's hour ecstatically

Unto my lips dost evermore present The body and blood of Love in sacrament Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be The inmost incense of his sanctuary;

Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent

Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent, And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!— O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,

And what to love the glory-when the whole Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal And weary water of the place of sighs, And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

WHAT Smouldering senses in death's sick delay
Or seizure of malign vicissitude
Can rob this body of honor, or denude
This soul of wedding raiment worn to-day?
For lo! even now my lady's lips did play

With these my lips such consonant interlude As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay. I was a child beneath her touch-a man

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she

A spirit when her spirit looked through meA god when all our life-breath met to fan Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardors ran, Fire within fire, desire in deity.

SOME ladies love the jewels in Love's zone
And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
In idle scornful hours he flings away;
And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be
they

Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday

And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.
My lady only loves the heart of Love:

Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee His bower of unimagined flower and tree: There kneels he now, and all-enhungered of Thine eyes gray-lit in shadowing hair above, Seals with thy mouth his immortality.

THOSE envied places which do know her well,
And are so scornful of this lonely place,
Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
Nowhere but here she is: and while Love's spell
From his predominant presence doth compel
All alien hours, an outworn populace,
The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
With sweet confederate music favorable.

GIRT in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,

O night desirous as the nights of youth! Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,

Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
Quickened within the girdling golden bar?

What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?

And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,

Tread softly round and gaze at me from far? Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee

Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears? O lonely night! art thou not known to me, A thicket hung with masks of mockery

And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM was born in 1828, at | Ballyshannon, Ireland, where his father was a banker. He was educated at a provincial school, and began very early to contribute to periodicals. In 1850 he published "The Music-Master," a love-story in verse. This was followed by his "Day and Night Songs" in 1854, of which an enlarged and finely illustrated edition

VENUS OF THE NEEDLE.

O MARYANNE, you pretty girl,
Intent on silky labor,

Of sempstresses the pink and pearl,
Excuse a peeping neighbor!

Those eyes forever drooping, give The long brown lashes rarely; But violets in the shadows liveFor once unveil them fairly.

Hast thou not lent that flounce enough
Of looks so long and earnest?
Lo, here's more "penetrable stuff,"
To which thou never turnest.

Ye graceful fingers, deftly sped!

How slender, and how nimble !

O might I wind their skeins of thread, Or but pick up their thimble!

How blest the youth whom love shall bring,
And happy stars embolden,

To change the dome into a ring,
The silver into golden!

Who 'll steal some morning to her side
To take her finger's measure,
While Maryanne pretends to chide,
And blushes deep with pleasure.

Who'll watch her sew her wedding-gown,
Well conscious that it is hers;
Who'll glean a tress, without a frown,
With those so ready scissors.

Who'll taste those ripenings of the south,
The fragrant and delicious-
Don't put the pins into your mouth,
O Maryanne, my precious!

I almost wish it were my trust
To teach how shocking that is;

I wish I had not, as I must,
To quit this tempting lattice.

appeared in 1855. He published a long poem, "Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland," in 1864, and edited "The Ballad Book," one of the "Golden Treasury" series. He held an office in the customs service for some years, received a literary pension in 1864, and in 1874 became editor of "Fraser's Magazine." His poems have been republished in Boston.

Sure aim takes Cupid, fluttering foe,
Across a street so narrow;
A thread of silk to string his bow,
A needle for his arrow:

EOLIAN HARP.

WHAT saith the river to the rushes gray,
Rushes sadly bending,

River slowly wending?

Who can tell the whispered things they say? Youth, and prime, and life, and time, Forever, ever fled away!

Drop your withered garlands in the stream,
Low autumnal branches,

Round the skiff that launches

Wavering downward through the lands of dream, Ever, ever fled away!

This the burden, this the theme.

What saith the river to the rushes gray, Rushes sadly bending,

River slowly wending?

It is near the closing of the day,
Near the night. Life and light
Forever, ever fled away!

Draw him tideward down; but not in haste.
Mouldering daylight lingers;
Night with her cold fingers
Sprinkles moonbeams on the dim sea-waste.
Ever, ever fled away!

Vainly cherished! vainly chased!

What saith the river to the rushes gray,
Rushes sadly bending,
River slowly wending?

Where in darkest glooms his bed we lay,
Up the cave moans the wave,
Forever, ever, ever fled away!