Ah, if I might but find
Myself again some sunny afternoon,
Face turned to Florence, faring up that path
Beside the wall, crumbling and ivy-grown,
Where weeds and wildflowers choke the violets,
Bursting, where the chance waits, to sudden flame.

There, from that upper room whose oriel eye
Looked from its cranny in the old home wall
Down o'er the land,—you, Sister, will recall
The charmèd place—we saw the quiet road
Winding away into the wider world.

My memory clings to every dear old spot

AFTER Many Y EARS

A GAIN on a bow, softly plunging
Under the wide star-drift,
We watch the white foam part and pass,
While the wind blows like a gift
Of a spirit somewhere east of the night
Into our hearts benign
With a sense that however the world is made
Love can only make it divine.

Two meteors sink, sad, to the sea,
Like lovers going to death,
A lone planet along their path
Leans, holding its breath.
Yet no dread from them drifts to us,
Who too one night must fall,

T RANSIENCY

Come , let us watch that rock down in the tide.
(So many things must go, so many things!)
Once we were young and the world was not so wide,
Or love had wings.

Once we could round the earth without a sail,
(The magic winds are gone, the magic foam!)
Where was the harbour that we did not hail,
That was not home?

Come, we will watch the moon with thoughts, not dreams.
(Whatever goes, love stays, love warm and wise!)
Winged is youth, and yet — our way still seems

S HELTER

I HAVE been out where the winds are,
And tossing tops of trees,
And clouds that sweep from rim to rim
Of blue infinities.
And all was a sound and sway there, a surging of unrest:
So now I am wanting silence, and the heart I love best.

Yes, and a quiet book, too,
Of pensive poetry,
In which to let the lines lapse
Away, unlessonedly.

S WALLOWS

I N a room that we love,
Under a lamp,
Whose soft glow falls around,
We sit each night and you read to me,
Through the silence soul-profound.
And black on the yellow frieze of the walls
The swallows fly unchanging;
Round, round, yet never round,
Ranging, — yet never ranging.

We sit and you read, your face aglow,
While amid dreams that start
I watch the swallows
As each follows
The other, swift, apart.
Till oft it seems that your words are birds,
Flying into my heart,

LOVE AND I NFINITY

A CROSS the kindling twilight moon
A late gull wings to rest.
The sea is murmuring underneath
Its vast eternal quest.
The coast-light flashes over the tide
A red and warning eye,
And Oh, the world is very wide,
But you are nigh!

The stars come out from zone to zone,
The wind knows every one
And blows their message to my heart,

In mount or vale, throughout the changeful year,
From all the by-ways of the world, I peer
Into the secret places where they wind
Almost beyond the utmost reach of mind,
And beauty, beauty everywhere I find.

" O why, " I asked, " doth Nature in such wealth
Lavish her jewels, hide them as by stealth,
The wondrous treasures of her artist soul
In opulence outpour, and o'er the whole
Great wilderness of worlds her splendours roll? "

From jungles only to the wild things known,
From waste karroo, from forest deep and lone.

The choral pines to the wild winds are singing,
A weird Æolian strain,
Aloft their green imperial branches swinging
In sunshine, dark and rain,
Through all the patient centuries outflinging
Their litanies of pain.

Stern atmospheres and lashing storms enfold them
And robes of ancient night;
The rock-sills of the solid planet hold them
And swing them to the light;
They whisper dreams — the dreams the mountains told them,
The great peaks tipped with white.

Dreams of the story of their own creation —
How from a burning mist

HE ANSWERS AGAIN

I KNOW you love me still, for all the blue
And ardent glances of your tender eyes
Can never feign, or you would not be you;
And yet in your high heart you do despise
The thing I did, and swift resentments rise
That I, unto myself was so untrue,
That I could stain the perfect love I knew,
That I could so defile my life's set prize!
You love me, yes, and yet you hate the sin
Against our love's convincing purity;
I mourn with you for what I might have been,
High priest of loyal Love's security —

HE ANSWERS

You , who have suffered much because I failed,
This bitter anguish you can never know —
To see in eyes you love the utter woe
Of one whose heart unto a cross is nailed.
Must those dear eyes forever be half veiled
As though afraid to meet the cruel blow
Of disillusion? Ah! how faint their glow —
Poor, martyred spirits by their love impaled.
Beloved, I would give my days to this,
Could I but render back the joy you miss,
And lift the load I laid, the deep distress.
I, by whose hand your soul was rudely torn —