LOVE Letters RETURNED IN S PRING

H OW many petals fall!
Yet in my heart
They once were growing all!

I WAS in love with life and then I died —
Because I lost the thing that I loved best.
In my embittered soul with arid zest
Sad disillusion, with fierce hate allied,
Battled with murdered love and wounded pride;
And harsh resentment, harbored in my breast,
Festered the wound in my dead soul, till Rest
Even the Rest of Death could not abide.
My holier self in grief unholy lost
Struggled to win my soul from sullen shame
And lift my eyes through sacrificial tears,
But though I proudly paid the crucial cost

The deed is speech. Great Love remembereth.
Only the voice that in the life is found.
The spoken word is but a broken breath
That moans in breaking into speech and sound;
The thought and feeling, — these are life and death,
And with the deed, complete life's fullest round.

Love is a boundless bliss:
All they who share it
With lover's look and lover's kiss,
Surely shall declare it.

Love is a precious pain:
No skill can heal it,
When they who sigh but sigh in vain
In their hearts conceal it.

Love with the crown of life
His king and queen covers,
When gallant man and gentle wife
Still are steadfast lovers.

Ah! and when envious Death
One life shall smother,
Love with his willow-wreath
Crowns that constant other.

Young men and maids, for love
Seek, till ye find it,

(Said Kildree Tim: " There's niver words
Betwixt me wife an' me!
Aroo, we live loike matin' birds,
Widout a peck! " says he,
Aye, niver a row or ruction, lad,
Me mild-shpoke mate an' I've wanst had! " )

Since first I've loved me Eily
We've wrangled, walked away,
An' fought an' kissed an' fallen out
An' stormed be night an' day!

Faith, since I've first loved Eily,
On throubled seas I've swung!
That woman's two-thirds made av fire,
An' wan-third made av tongue!

But then she ends in weepin',

Lord of the wind and fire,
In whose dread name
All things are wrought,
Clothe me with large desire
And ardent flame
Of breathing thought.
That all the world may know
Thy love and might,
And be in awe,
Let me in beauty show,
And pageant light,
Thy perfect Law.

We , who have loved, and from our Faith have faltered,
And made of love a desecrated thing,
How can we bear to face the God we've altered?
Like some great eagle on a broken wing,
No more our love can rise to heights transcendent
Where glows the light that ne'er on sea or shore
Has shone except for those whose love resplendent
Has lent them wings of fire on which to soar.
From that dim region which our souls inherit
We bore the promise of a pristine flame;
Alas! that we, who knew the holy Spirit,

She kissed His feet!
Those stained feet
Her tears had purified,
And fresh and clean and sweet,
With raven tresses dried.

She kissed His feet!
Her lips were now
As stainless as the dew,
Or star-flakes of the snow,
Or heaven's unsullied blue.

She kissed His feet!
Her Saviour's feet;
Least tribute for her cure;
To us, her message sweet:
" Love maketh all things pure. "

Oh , thou that lovest! do not deem thou hast no rival nigh,
To interrupt thy visions, or cloud thy golden sky;
And though Hope's syren voice beguile, believe not all her song,
Nor deem the joys enduring that to the lay belong.
Thou hast a rival, lover, however blest thou art,
How dear soe'er the object be, that kindles up thy heart;
There may be bloom upon her cheek, light on her forehead fair,
And balm upon her rich red lip, as sweet, as roses are;
And kindness in her lustrous eyes on thee alone bestowed,

I.

IN ABSENCE .

My love for thee is like a winged seed
Blown from the heart of thy rare beauty's flower,
And deftly guided by some breezy power
To fall and rest, where I should never heed,
In deepest caves of memory. There, indeed,
With virtue rife of many a sunny hour, —
Ev'n making cold neglect and darkness dower
Its roots with life, — swiftly it 'gan to breed,