A BROWN head and a golden head
Above the violets keep in sight;
Dark eyes and blue (with tears to shed)
Look laughing toward me in the light.
A red-bird flashes from the tree:
“The world is glad, is glad!” sings he.

A golden head, a head of brown,
Below the violets, miss the sun;
Dark eyes and blue—their lids shut down—
With tears (and theirs were brief) have done.
A dove hides in another tree:
“The world is sad, is sad!” grieves she.

Through song and moan, I hardly know,
Between the red-bird and the dove,

Shalt thou be conquered of a human fate
My liege, my lover, whose imperial head
Hath never bent in sorrow of defeat?
Shalt thou be vanquished, whose imperial feet
Have shattered armies and stamped empires dead?
Who shall unking thee, husband of a queen?
Wear thou thy majesty inviolate,
Earth's glories flee of human eyes unseen,
Earth's kingdoms fade to a remembered dream,
But thine henceforth shall be a power supreme,
Dazzling command and rich dominion,
The winds thy heralds and thy vassals all
The silver-belted planets and the sun.

Among the trees I may yet
Enjoy the day at sunset;
For willow winds are not cold,
Apricot rains are not wet.

Never knowing
they would
remind me
of him,
he planted
the trees
in those days
of his
old age—
thinking only of blossoms.

In this
world of ours,
what good
does it do
for you
to have
the praise
of men?
For blossoms,
the winds of spring;
for the moon,
floating clouds.

The large untidy February skies—
Some cheerful starlings screeling on a tree—
West wind and low-shot sunlight in my eyes—
Is this decline for me?

The feel of winter finishing once more—
Sense of the present as a tale half told—
The land of life to look at and explore—
Is this, then, to grow old?

Yf theis my humble lynes thy presence to to boldely wronge;
so to unmaske my love with woordes inferior to mythoughtes;
conceave withall his resteles passion that hath causde the same.
whose worthy choyse, butt weves his wracke if chaunce do nill thereto
nott fortunes favors butt thy lovely selfe my love affectes,
nott searche of heigher happe, thy sweete asspect my lyffe contents:
whose chearefull grace fyrste gave the hope, whereto my harte lent faythe:
And love that kepes noe meane, by yeldinge shewes in proces grew

When the little spent winds are at rest in the tamarack tree
In the still of the night,
And the moon in her waning is wan and misshapen,
And out on the lake
The loon floats in a glimmer of light,
And the solitude sleeps,—
Then I lie in my bunk wide awake,
And my long thoughts stab me with longing,
Alone in my shack by the marshes of lone Margaree.

Far, oh so far in the forests of silence they lie,
The lake and the marshes of lone Margaree,
And no man comes my way.
Of spruce logs my cabin is builded securely;

He who would start and rise
Before the crowing cocks,—
No more he lifts his eyes,
Whoever knocks.

He who before the stars
Would call the cattle home,—
They wait about the bars
For him to come.

Him at whose hearty calls
The farmstead woke again
The horses in their stalls
Expect in vain.

Busy and blithe and bold
He laboured for the morrow,—
The plough his hands would hold
Rusts in the furrow.

His fields he had to leave,
His orchards cool and dim;
The clods he used to cleave
Now cover him.

Heroic counsel shook our hearts to-day,
Where new-mown grass perfumed your hedge-row-dell;
Blue lights across your mangold-wurzel fell,
And Ely shone, a phantom far away.

We spoke of coming claims for social sway,
Of rising horde and shattered citadel,
And one thought all things surely must be well,
And one had little faith, and murmured “Nay!”

Then, in the primrose sunset of July,
Homeward along the Hinton fields we came,
And each to other questioning made reply

That man and God and nation were the same