id="id00168">'Pray, pluck me some,' I said. She brought me two,
For daffodils were very fine that year,—
O very fine, but daffodils no more.

VI

WHY DID SHE MARRY HIM?

Why did she marry him? Ah, say why!
  How was her fancy caught?
What was the dream that he drew her by,
  Or was she only bought?
Gave she her gold for a girlish whim,
  A freak of a foolish mood?
Or was it some will, like a snake in him,
  Lay a charm upon her blood?

Love of his limbs, was it that, think you?
  Body of bullock build,
Sap in the bones, and spring in the thew,
  A lusty youth unspilled?
But is it so that a maid is won,
  Such a maiden maid as she?
Her face like a lily all white in the sun,
  For such mere male as he!
Ah, why do the fields with their white and gold
  To Farmer Clod belong,
Who though he hath reaped and stacked and sold
  Hath never heard their song?
Nay, seek not an answer, comfort ye,
  The poet heard their call,
And so, dear Love, will I comfort me—
  He hath thy lease, that's all.

VII

THE LAMP AND THE STAR

Yea, let me be 'thy bachelere,'
  'Tis sweeter than thy lord;
How should I envy him, my dear,
  The lamp upon his board.
Still make his little circle bright
With boon of dear domestic light,
  While I afar,
Watching his windows in the night,
  Worship a star
For which he hath no bolt or bar.
  Yea, dear,
  Thy 'bachelere.'

VIII

ORBITS

Two stars once on their lonely way
  Met in the heavenly height,
And they dreamed a dream they might shine alway
  With undivided light;
Melt into one with a breathless throe,
  And beam as one in the night.

And each forgot in the dream so strange
  How desolately far
Swept on each path, for who shall change
  The orbit of a star?
Yea, all was a dream, and they still must go
  As lonely as they are.

IX

NEVER—EVER

My mouth to thy mouth
  Ah never, ah never!
My breast from thy breast
  Eternities sever;
But my soul to thy soul
  For ever and ever.

X

LOVE'S POOR

Yea, love, I know, and I would have it thus,
I know that not for us
Is springtide Passion with his fire and flowers,
I know this love of ours
Lives not, nor yet may live,
By the dear food that lips and hands can give.
Not, Love, that we in some high dream despise
The common lover's common Paradise;
Ah, God, if Thou and I
But one short hour their blessedness might try,
How could we poor ones teach
Those happy ones who half forget them rich:
For if we thus endure,
'Tis only, love, because we are so poor.

XI

COMFORT OF DANTE

Down where the unconquered river still flows on,
  One strong free thing within a prison's heart,
  I drew me with my sacred grief apart,
That it might look that spacious joy upon:
And as I mused, lo! Dante walked with me,
  And his face spake of the high peace of pain
Till all my grief glowed in me throbbingly
  As in some lily's heart might glow the rain.

So like a star I listened, till mine eye
  Caught that lone land across the water-way
    Wherein my lady breathed,—now breathing is—
'O Dante,' then I said, 'she more than I
  Should know thy comfort, go to her, I pray.'
    'Nay!' answered he, 'for she hath Beatrice.'

XII

A LOST HOUR

God gave us an hour for our tears,
One hour out of all the years,
For all the years were another's gold,
Given in a cruel troth of old.

And how did we spend his boon?
  That sweet miraculous flower
  Born to die in an hour,
Late born to die so soon.

Did we watch it with breathless breath
  By slow degrees unfold?
    Did we taste the innermost heart of it
    The honey of each sweet part of it?
  Suck all its hidden gold
To the very dregs of its death?

Nay, this is all we did with our hour—
We tore it to pieces, that precious flower;
Like any daisy, with listless mirth,
We shed its petals upon the earth;
And, children-like, when it all was done,
We cried unto God for another one.

XIII

MET ONCE MORE

O Lady, I have looked on thee once more,
Thou too hast looked on me, as thou hadst said,
And though the joy was pain, the pain was bliss,
Bliss that more happy lovers well may miss:
Captives feast richly on a little bread,
So are we very rich who are so poor.

XIV

A JUNE LILY

[The poet dramatises his Lady's loneliness]

Alone! once more alone! how like a tomb
My little parlour sounds which only now
Yearned like some holy chancel with his voice.
So still! so empty! Surely one might fear
The walls should meet in ruinous collapse
That held no more his music. Yet they stand
Firm in a foolish firmness, meaningless
As frescoed sepulchre some Pharaoh built
But never came to sleep in; built, indeed,
For—that grey moth to flit in like a ghost!

Alone! another feast-day come and gone,
Watched through the weeks as in my garden there
I watch a seedling grow from blade to bud
Impatient for its blossom. So this day
Has bloomed at last, and we have plucked its flower
And shared its sweetness, and once more the time
Is as that stalk from which but now I plucked
Its last June-lily as a parting sign.
Yea, but he seemed to love it! yet if he
But craved it in deceit of tenderness
To make my heart glow brighter with a lie!
Will it indeed be cherished as he said,
Or will he keep it near his book a while,
And when grown rank forget it in his glass,
And leave it for the maid who dusts his room
To clear away and cast upon the heap?
Or, may be, will he bury it away
In some old drawer with other mummy-flowers?

Nay, but I wrong thee, dear one, thinking so.
My boy, my love, my poet! Nay, I know
Thy lonely room, tomb-like to thee as mine,
Tomb-like as tomb of some returning ghost
Seems only bright about my lily-flower.
And, mayhap, while I wrong thee thus in thought
Thou bendest o'er it, feigning for some ease
Of parted ache conceits of poet-wit
On petal and on stamen—let me try!
If lilies be alike thine is as this,
I wonder if thy reading tallies too.

Six petals with a dewdrop in their heart,
Six pure brave years, an ivory cup of tears;
Six pearly-pillared stamens golden-crowned
Growing from out the dewdrop, and a seventh
Soaring alone trilobed and mystic green;
Six pearl-bright years aflower with gold of joy,
Sprung from the heart of those brave tear-fed years:
But what that seventh