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, That while the maze hath still its bower for While the leaves throb beneath, around, above, Oh passing sweet and dear, Ah me! with what proud growth 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 All things unsought, yet nothing more to seek- 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 How should all this be told?- Alas! shall hope be nursed 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- Though round its head the dawn begins to pour 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. A NEW YEAR'S BURDEN. O soul-sequestered face Far off-oh were that night but now! Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace 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 Of all the songs that we have known Not that, my love, ah no!- 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, A spirit is born whose birth endows My blood with fire to burn through me; And whom my life grows faint to hear. 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, Ah! let not hope be still distraught, Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought, 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: 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 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 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 Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday And thank his wings to-day that he is flown. 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, 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 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. 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, Of sempstresses the pink and pearl, 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 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, To change the dome into a ring, Who 'll steal some morning to her side Who'll watch her sew her wedding-gown, Who'll taste those ripenings of the south, I almost wish it were my trust I wish I had not, as I must, 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, EOLIAN HARP. WHAT saith the river to the rushes gray, 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, 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, Draw him tideward down; but not in haste. Vainly cherished! vainly chased! What saith the river to the rushes gray, Where in darkest glooms his bed we lay, |