Who's this pretty wingèd boy?
'Tis Love, mischievous and coy.
Old as time he still is young,
Suasive is his silver tongue.
Frequently perdu he lies
In the depths of laughing eyes;
Wealth and ease and luxury,
Youth, desire and levity,—
These his close companions be.
Beauty and seductive smiles,
Agacerie, and wanton wiles
Nourish him, and honeyed kisses.
He the soul with grief can wring,
And can dreams of rapture bring.
Hopes, and fears, and dainty blisses
Are his guerdons, and his darts
Havoc make with human hearts.

The womanhood of France is travestied,
Held up to scorn
By the lewd Art of France. Yet many a heart
In France is nobler than all Gallic Art:
Love hath not wholly died,
Though love may mourn

Though sweet-lipped harlots on the Gallic stage
Still hold their own,
Sweet-lipped, sweet-bosomed, but with hearts as black
And deadly as the midnight's moonless rack,
Yet Hugo thrilled the age
With sound as of a sudden trumpet blown.

Hugo, with Shakespeare's sweetness in his eyes,
And in his heart
A strength as of the Northern waves that break,

Thou dost not know the numberless sweet heats
To whom the gentle knowledge of thee came
Through the soft messages my song imparts:
Thou dost not know how many gold-tipped darts,
Winged, beautiful, abundant, bright with flame,
My soul, on fire with loving thee, doth aim
Against the steel-bound cuirass of the world,
That so it might be pierced with utter shame,
In that it has not known and loved of old
The name that I from height to height have hurled.
There is not any flower, with heart of gold,
But hath in darkness of the summer night

Before the grass grew over me,
I knew one good man through and through
And knew a soul and body joined
Are stronger than the heavens are blue.

A wisdom worthy of thy joy,
O great heart, read I as I ran;
Now, though men smite me on the face,
I cannot curse the face of man.

I loved the man I saw yestreen
Hanged with his babe's blood on his palms.
I loved the man I saw to-day
Who knocked not when he came with alms.

Hush!—for thy sake I even faced
The knowledge that is worse than hell;
And loved the man I saw but now

H ELEN'S lips are drifting dust;
Ilion is consumed with rust;
All the galleons of Greece
Drink the ocean's dreamless peace;
Lost was Solomon's purple show
Restless centuries ago;
Stately empires wax and wane—
Babylon, Barbary, and Spain;—
Only one thing, undefaced,
Lasts, though all the worlds lie waste
And the heavens are overturned.
—Dear, how long ago we learned!

There's a sight that blinds the sun,
Sound that lives when sounds are done,
Music that rebukes the birds,
Language lovelier than words,
Hue and scent that shame the rose,

O we have loved you through cold and rain
And pitiless frost,
Consuming our offering of blood and brain
Gladly again and again and again,
Though it all seemed lost,
Ireland, Ireland!

O we will fight, fight on for you till
Your anguish is past,
The wronged ones righted, the tyrants still.—
Though God has not saved you, yet we will,
At the last, at the last,
Ireland, Ireland!

O we will love you in warmth and light
And the happy day,
When you have forgotten the terrible night,
Standing proud and beautiful bright
For ever and aye,

If my harsh humble style, and rhymes ill dressed,
Arrive not to your worth and beauty glorious,
My Muse's shoulders are with weight oppressed,
And heavenly beams are o'er my fight victorious.
If these dim colours have your worth expressed,
Laid by love's hand, and not by art laborious,
Your sun-like rays have my wits' harvest blessed,
Enabling me to make your praise notorious.
But if, alas! alas! the heavens defend it!
My lines your eyes, my love your heart displeasing,
Breed hate in you, and kill my hope of easing;

In the old years that creep on us so fast,
When Time goes by us with a halting tread,
Shall we sit still and ponder at the last
The young swift years of love that will be dead?
Shall we look back upon the passionate years.
Where in a maze our younger figures move,
Instinct with half-forgotten hopes and fears,
And gaze anew on the mirage of love?

Yes, we two, like old actors at the play,
Watching the beating of a tinsel heart,
Will laugh and weep, and clap our hands, and say,
“How sadly that young lover played his part

The earth is waking at the voice of May,
The new grass brightens by the trodden way,
The woods wave welcome to the sweet spring day,
And the sea is growing summer blue;
But fairer, sweeter than the smiling sky,
Or bashful violet with tender eye,
Is she whose love for me will never die,—
I love you, darling, only you!

O, friendships falter when misfortunes frown,
The blossoms vanish when the leaves turn brown,
The shells lie stranded when the tide goes down,
But you, dear heart, are ever true.
The grass grows greenest when the rain-drops fall,

O Elkhorn City, little town!
On which the Cumberland look down
Fond and protectingly.
Around your northern border grows
The spruce pines, and the Sandy flows
Among them tranquilly.

Your streets are ornamented well
With trees and cottages where dwell
Ever contentedly
A people, hospitable and kind,
To Life and Duty never blind
High minded proud and free.

O Elkhorn City! In my heart
I hold for you a goodly part
Of love's devotion true;
And this my wish: That He above
May ever spread his wings of love
Around and over you.