trust,
—The sun and dews, to frame the Just.
   He drew his daily life from these,
   According to his own decrees
Who makes man from the fertile dust.

Sweet summer and the winter wild,
These brought him forth, the Undefiled.
   The happy Springs renewed again
   His daily bread, the growing grain,
The food and raiment of the Child.

TO THE BELOVED DEAD—A LAMENT

Beloved, thou art like a tune that idle fingers
   Play on a window-pane.
The time is there, the form of music lingers;
   But O thou sweetest strain,
Where is thy soul?  Thou liest i’ the wind and rain.

Even as to him who plays that idle air,
   It seems a melody,
For his own soul is full of it, so, my Fair,
   Dead, thou dost live in me,
And all this lonely soul is full of thee.

Thou song of songs!—not music as before
   Unto the outward ear;
My spirit sings thee inly evermore,
   Thy falls with tear on tear.
I fail for thee, thou art too sweet, too dear.

Thou silent song, thou ever voiceless rhyme,
   Is there no pulse to move thee,
At windy dawn, with a wild heart beating time,
   And falling tears above thee,
O music stifled from the ears that love thee?

Oh, for a strain of thee from outer air!
   Soul wearies soul, I find.
Of thee, thee, thee, I am mournfully aware,
   —Contained in one poor mind,
Who wert in tune and time to every wind.

Poor grave, poor lost belovéd! but I burn
   For some more vast To be.
As he that played that secret tune may turn
   And strike it on a lyre triumphantly,
I wait some future, all a lyre for thee.

SONNET

Your own fair youth, you care so little for it,
   Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
   Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.

If ever, in time to come, you would explore it—
   Your old self whose thoughts went like last year’s pansies,
   Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.

To keep all joys of yours from Time’s estranging,
   I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
      Happy, and pensive past for ever is.

I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
   In which your June has never passed away.
      Walk there awhile among my memories.

IN AUTUMN

The leaves are many under my feet,
   And drift one way.
Their scent of death is weary and sweet.
   A flight of them is in the grey
Where sky and forest meet.

The low winds moan for dead sweet years;
   The birds sing all for pain,
Of a common thing, to weary ears,—
   Only a summer’s fate of rain,
And a woman’s fate of tears.

I walk to love and life alone
   Over these mournful places,
Across the summer overthrown,
   The dead joys of these silent faces,
To claim my own.

I know his heart has beat to bright
   Sweet loves gone by.
I know the leaves that die to-night
   Once budded to the sky,
And I shall die from his delight.

O leaves, so quietly ending now,
   You have heard cuckoos sing.
And I will grow upon my bough
   If only for a Spring,
And fall when the rain is on my brow.

O tell me, tell me ere you die,
   Is it worth the pain?
You bloomed so fair, you waved so high;
   Now that the sad days wane,
Are you repenting where you lie?

I lie amongst you, and I kiss
   Your fragrance mouldering.
O dead delights, is it such bliss,
   That tuneful Spring?
Is love so sweet, that comes to this?

O dying blisses of the year,
   I hear the young lambs bleat,
The clamouring birds i’ the copse I hear,
   I hear the waving wheat,
Together laid on a dead-leaf bier.

Kiss me again as I kiss you;
   Kiss me again;
For all your tuneful nights of dew,
   In this your time of rain,
For all your kisses when Spring was new.

You will not, broken hearts; let be.
   I pass across your death
To a golden summer you shall not see,
   And in your dying breath
There is no benison for me.

There is an autumn yet to wane,
   There are leaves yet to fall,
Which, when I kiss, may kiss again,
   And, pitied, pity me all for all,
And love me in mist and rain.

A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE

Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses,
O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses
What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses.

O mother, for the weight of years that break thee!
O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee,
And from the changes of my heart must make thee.

O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven.
Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven?
And are they calm about the fall of even?

Pause near the ending of thy long migration,
For this one sudden hour of desolation
Appeals to one hour of thy meditation.

Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee
Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee,
Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee.

Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander
Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder
The misty mountains of the morning yonder.

Listen:- the mountain winds with rain were fretting,
And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting.
I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting.

What part of this wild heart of mine I know not
Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not,
And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not.

Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it
Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it,
And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it.

Oh, in some hour of thine my thoughts shall guide thee.
Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence hide thee,
This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee,—

Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden,
With thy regrets was morning over-shaden,
With sorrow thou hast left, her life was laden.

But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee
Life changes, and the years and days renew thee.
Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee.

Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses
Upon the evening as the morning tresses,
Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses.

And we, so altered in our shifting phases,
Track one another ’mid the many mazes
By the eternal child-breath of the daisies.

I have not writ this letter of divining
To make a glory of thy silent pining,
A triumph of thy mute and strange declining.

Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded.
Only one morning, and the day was clouded.
And one old age with all regrets is crowded.

Oh, hush; oh, hush!  Thy tears my words are steeping.
Oh, hush, hush, hush!  So full, the fount of weeping?
Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping?

Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her.
Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter
That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her.

The one who now thy faded features guesses,
With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses,
With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses.

SONG

As the inhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, along the whole
   Wide shining strand, and floods the caves,
   Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.

But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places