Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit For healthy joy and salutary pain : Thou knowest the chase useless, and again Turnest to follow it. TWILIGHT CALM. O PLEASANT eventide ! Clouds on the western side Grow gray and grayer, hiding the warm sun : The bees and birds, their happy labors done, Seek their close nests and bide. Screened in the leafy wood The stock-doves sit and brood: The very squirrel leaps from bough to bough But lazily; pauses; and settles now Where once he stored his food. One by one the flowers close, Shutting their tender petals from the moon : The dormouse squats and eats Beneath the spreading roots of a broad lime ; From far the lowings come Of cattle driven home: The gnats whirl in the air, The evening gnats; and there The owl opes broad his eyes and wings to sail For prey; the bat wakes; and the shell-less snail Comes forth, clammy and bare. Hark! that's the nightingale, Her song told when this ancient earth was young: So echoes answered when her song was sung In the first wooded vale. We call it love and pain The passion of her strain; And yet we little understand or know : In separate herds the deer Lie; here the bucks, and here The does, and by its mother sleeps the fawn: The hare sleeps where it lies, With wary half-closed eyes ; The cock has ceased to crow, the hen to cluck : Or chicken to surprise. Remote, each single star Comes out, till there they are All shining brightly: how the dews fall damp! While close at hand the glow-worm lights her lamp Or twinkles from afar. But evening now is done As much as if the sun Day-giving had arisen in the east: For night has come; and the great calm has ceased, The quiet sands have run. WIFE TO HUSBAND. PARD ARDON the faults in me, I must drift across the sea, I must sink into the snow, You can bask in this sun, You can drink wine, and eat : I must gird myself and run, Blank sea to sail upon, Cold bed to sleep in : While you clasp, I must be gone A kiss for one friend, A lock that you must send, Not a word for you, Not a lock or kiss, Good by. We, one, must part in two; Verily death is this: I must die. "A THREE SEASONS. CUP for hope!" she said, In springtime ere the bloom was old: The crimson wine was poor and cold By her mouth's richer red. "A cup for love!" how low, How soft the words; and all the while Like summer after snow. 66 A cup for memory!" Cold cup that one must drain alone : While autumn winds are up and moan Across the barren sea. Hope, memory, love : Hope for fair morn, and love for day, THE MIRAGE. HE hope I dreamed of was a dream, Was but a dream; and now I wake Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old, For a dream's sake. |