XXXV

I. M.

MARGARITA SORORI

(1886)

A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies;

And from the west,

Where the sun, his day's work ended,

Lingers as in content,

There falls on the old, grey city

An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.

The smoke ascends

In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on.

Closing his benediction,

L

The sun,

Sinks, and the darkening air

Thrills with a sense of the triumphing nightNight with her train of stars

And her great gift of sleep.

So be my passing!

My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart

Some late lark singing,

Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,

Death.

1876

XXXVI

I GAVE my heart to a woman—

I

gave

it her, branch and root.

She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,
She cast it under foot.

Under her feet she cast it,

She trampled it where it fell,

She broke it all to pieces,

And each was a clot of hell.

There in the rain and the sunshine
They lay and smouldered long ;
And each, when again she viewed them,
Had turned to a living song.

XXXVII

To W. A.

OR ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave,

I was a King in Babylon

And you were a Christian Slave.

I saw, I took, I cast you by,

I bent and broke your pride. You loved me well, or I heard them lie, But your longing was denied. Surely I knew that by and by

You cursed your gods and died.

And a myriad suns have set and shone
Since then upon the grave
Decreed by the King in Babylon

To her that had been his Slave.

The pride I trampled is now my scathe, For it tramples me again.

The old resentment lasts like death,
For you love, yet you refrain.

I break my heart on your hard unfaith,
And I break my heart in vain.

Yet not for an hour do I wish undone
The deed beyond the grave,
When I was a King in Babylon

And you were a Virgin Slave.