A pink bough for your embrace.

  Yet if over hill and hollow
  Still it is your will to follow,
  I am off;—to heel, Apollo!

Portrait by a Neighbor

  Before she has her floor swept
    Or her dishes done,
  Any day you'll find her
    A-sunning in the sun!

  It's long after midnight
    Her key's in the lock,
  And you never see her chimney smoke
    Till past ten o'clock!

  She digs in her garden
    With a shovel and a spoon,
  She weeds her lazy lettuce
    By the light of the moon,

  She walks up the walk
    Like a woman in a dream,
  She forgets she borrowed butter
    And pays you back cream!

  Her lawn looks like a meadow,
    And if she mows the place
  She leaves the clover standing
    And the Queen Anne's lace!

Midnight Oil

  Cut if you will, with Sleep's dull knife,
    Each day to half its length, my friend,—
  The years that Time takes off my life,
    He'll take from off the other end!

The Merry Maid

  Oh, I am grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!
  I set my throat against the air,
    I laugh at simple folk!

  There's little kind and little fair
    Is worth its weight in smoke
  To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

  Lass, if to sleep you would repair
    As peaceful as you woke,
  Best not besiege your lover there
    For just the words he spoke
  To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

To Kathleen

  Still must the poet as of old,
  In barren attic bleak and cold,
  Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to
  Such things as flowers and song and you;

  Still as of old his being give
  In Beauty's name, while she may live,
  Beauty that may not die as long
  As there are flowers and you and song.

To S. M.

If he should lie a-dying

  I am not willing you should go
  Into the earth, where Helen went;
  She is awake by now, I know.
  Where Cleopatra's anklets rust
  You will not lie with my consent;
  And Sappho is a roving dust;
  Cressid could love again; Dido,
  Rotted in state, is restless still:
  You leave me much against my will.

The Philosopher

  And what are you that, wanting you
    I should be kept awake
  As many nights as there are days
    With weeping for your sake?

  And what are you that, missing you,
    As many days as crawl
  I should be listening to the wind
    And looking at the wall?

  I know a man that's a braver man
    And twenty men as kind,
  And what are you, that you should be
    The one man in my mind?

  Yet women's ways are witless ways,
    As any sage will tell,—
  And what am I, that I should love
    So wisely and so well?

Four Sonnets

I

  Love, though for this you riddle me with