I sought among the drifting leaves,
The golden leaves that once were green,
To see if Love were hiding there
And peeping out between.

For thro' the silver showers of May
And thro' the summer's heavy heat,
In vain I sought his golden head
And light, fast-flying feet.

Perhaps when all the world is bare
And cruel winter holds the land,
The Love that finds no place to hide
Will run and catch my hand.

I shall not care to have him then,
I shall be bitter and a-cold --
It grows too late for frolicking

Light love in a mist, by the midsummer moon misguided,
Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist,
Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided
Light love in a mist.

All day in the sun, when the breezes do all they list,
His soft blue raiment of cloudlike blossom abided
Unrent and unwithered of winds and of rays that kissed.

Blithe-hearted or sad, as the cloud or the sun subsided,
Love smiled in the flower with a meaning whereof none wist
Save two that beheld, as a gleam that before them glided,

Then thou hast learnt the secret of my soul,
Officious Friendship has its trust betrayed;
No more I need the bursting sigh control,
Nor summon pride my struggling soul to aid.

But think not banished hope returns again,
Think not I write thy thankless heart to move;
The faded form that tells my tender pain
May win thy pity, but it can't thy love.

Nor can I move thee by soft winning art,
By manners taught to charm, or practised glance;
Artless as thine, my too too feeling heart
Disdains the tutored eye, the fond advance.

No strength of nature can suffice
To serve the Lord aright:
And what she has she misapplies,
For want of clearer light.

How long beneath the law I lay
In bondage and distress;
I toll'd the precept to obey,
But toil'd without success.

Then, to abstain from outward sin
Was more than I could do;
Now, if I feel its power within,
I feel I hate it too.

Then all my servile works were done
A righteousness to raise;
Now, freely chosen in the Son,
I freely choose His ways.

"Here we dwell, in holiest bowers,
Where angels of light o'er our orisans bend;
Where sighs of devotion and breathings of flowers
To heaven in mingled odour ascend.
Do not disturb our calm, oh Love!
So like is thy form to the cherubs above,
It well might deceive such hearts as ours."

Love stood near the Novice and listen'd,
And Love is no novice in taking a hint;
His laughing blue eyes soon with piety glisten'd;
His rosy wing turn'd to heaven's own tint.
"Who would have thought," the urchin cries,

I play'd with you 'mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander'd hand in hand together;
But that was sixty years ago.

You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
And still our early love was strong;
Still with no care our days were laden,
They glided joyously along;
And I did love you very dearly,
How dearly words want power to show;

All right. I may have lied to you and about you, and made a few
pronouncements a bit too sweeping, perhaps, and possibly forgotten
to tag the bases here or there,
And damned your extravagence, and maligned your tastes, and libeled
your relatives, and slandered a few of your friends,
O.K.,
Nevertheless, come back.

Come home. I will agree to forget the statements that you issued so
copiously to the neighbors and the press,
And you will forget that figment of your imagination, the blonde from Detroit;

Love is the sunlight of the soul,
That, shining on the silken-tressèd head
Of her we love, around it seems to shed
A golden angel-aureole.

And all her ways seem sweeter ways
Than those of other women in that light:
She has no portion with the pallid night,
But is a part of all fair days.

Joy goes where she goes, and good dreams—
Her smile is tender as an old romance
Of Love that dies not, and her soft eye’s glance
Like sunshine set to music seems.

Queen of our fate is she, but crowned

The longer I live and the more I see
Of the struggle of souls towards the heights above,
The stronger this truth comes home to me---
That the Universe rests on the shoulders of love,
A love so limitless, deep, and broad,
That men have re-named it, and called it God.

And nothing that was ever born or evolved,
Nothing created by light or force
But deep in its system there lies dissolved
A shining drop from the great Love source;
A shining drop that shall live for aye;
Though kingdoms may perish and stars decay.

How many times, like lotus lilies risen
Upon the surface of a river, there
Have risen floating on my blood the rare
Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

So I am clothed all over with the light
And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;
Till naked for her in the finest fashion
The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.

And then I offer all myself unto
This woman who likes to love me: but she turns
A look of hate upon the flower that burns
To break and pour her out its precious dew.