Love , which in courts is but a toy for spleen,
Is a grave matter on the village green
The loving shepherd, laid upon the shelf,
Acts like a proper swain, and hangs himself:
The courtier sees his faithless fair another's,
And mutters with a shrug, ‘Well, I've two others’.

If thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered,—if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,—
Oh, yet believe that, in that hollow vale
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,

Love wine and beauty and the spring,
While wine is red and spring is here,
And through the almond blossoms ring
The dove-like voices of thy Dear.

Love wine and spring and beauty while
The wine hath flavour and spring masks
Her treachery in so soft a smile
That none may think of toil and tasks.

But when spring goes on hurrying feet,
Look not thy sorrow in the eyes,
And bless thy freedom from thy sweet:
This is the wisdom of the wise.

Love is more sweet than flowers,
But sooner dying;
Warmer than sunny hours,
But faster flying;

Softer than music's whispers
Springing with day
To murmur till the vespers,
Then die away;

More kind than friendship's greeting,
But as untrue,
Brighter than hope, but fleeting
More swiftly too;

Like breath of summer breezes
Gently it sighs,
But soon, alas! one ceases,
The other dies;

And like an inundation
It leaves behind
An utter desolation
Of heart and mind.

Who then would court Love's presence,

Love faded in my heart,
I thought it was dead;
Now new flowers start,
Fresh leaves outspread.
Why do these flowers upstart
And again the leaves spread?
Oh, when will it be dead
This root that tears my heart!

I do not ask for love, ah! no,
Nor friendship's happiness,
These were relinquished long ago;
I search for something less.

I seek a little tranquil bark
In which to drift at ease
Awhile, and then quite silently
To sink in quiet seas.

The fault is not mine if I love you too much,
—I loved you too little too long,
Such ever your graces, your tenderness such,
—And the music the heart gave the tongue.

A time is now coming when Love must be gone,
—Though he never abandoned me yet.
Acknowledge our friendship, our passion disown,
—Our follies (ah can you?) forget.

What were I, Love, if I were stripped of thee,
If thine eyes shut me out whereby I live,
Thou, who unto my calmer soul dost give
Knowledge, and Truth, and holy Mystery,
Wherein Truth mainly lies for those who see
Beyond the earthly and the fugitive,
Who in the grandeur of the soul believe,
And only in the Infinite are free?
Without thee I were naked, bleak, and bare
As yon dead cedar on the sea-cliff's brow;
And Nature's teachings, which come to me now,
Common and beautiful as light and air,
Would be as fruitless as a stream which still

But one—but I! whose amorous flow
On my long earth-travel I shall not miss
Till Death through the temple of Love shall go.

As rose in my heart the deep love-strife
For that sweet girl-blossom in clematis-snow,
To woo her and win her, a darling wife.