Kiss, my love, kiss
My burning, breaking being;
So when cold death
Will put out the light
In some wilderness
Of far forsaken life
Might each kiss blossom
Into a lotus and a Shephali.
And in the desolate hours
Of loneliness of traveling
In the dusk of despair
One petal of these
Will cheer the vagrant souls
That tread the pathway
Of love's forsaking.
Or, when Death will sow
This Soul of mine
On the lake-shore of sorrow,
Like a weeping willow I will spring,
And with my green tresses
And bending body

In the perfumed shrine of love,
Where burns memory's exhaustless incense
From the irridescent thurible of hope,
On the altar and couch of my heart
Rest thy limbs, O, god of my soul.
Drink of the unquenchable draught of caresses;
Tear the flowers of my dreams and fancies;
Scatter the sacred petals of my passion
To the four winds of thy rejoicing.

Thy rejoicing, that one festival of the High Gods,
Where no offering that I bring ever be too dear,
Where no soul burnt in the fire of senses can perish;

Early in the morning--in the morning of life.
Resting while the flowers unfolding to soothe the burning day of
strife.
Fleeting hands lingering nearer, pressing down the folds of my shade.
A heart of gold ye diamond light transparent, to my soul such love
is made.

I must rise and be ascending, while the flowers are in full bloom.
Through the fields be swiftly passing, the fleeting hours of noon.
I shall gather while praising on the lyre, a few wreaths are strewn.
That I shall rest through the evening, for the night shall triumph
soon.

Love comes divinely, gladdening mortal life,
As sunrise dawns upon the gaze of one
Bewildered in some outland waste, and lost:
Who, lonely faint and shuddering, through the night
Heard savage creatures nigh; and far-off moan
Of tempests on the wind.

Auroral joy
Flushes the brow of childhood, warms his cheek
To rosier redness at the name of Love;
And earlier thoughts awake in darkness strive;
As unfledged nestlings move their sightless heads
At sound, toward a fair world to them unknown.
Young Hope scales azure mountain heights to gaze,

(To E.W.)


Home, O most pale adventurer, are you bound
From that strange kingdom where no love may trace
The life it loves to its abiding place,
Or hail it from afar with cheerful sound.
From deeps whose marges mortal ne'er hath found
You steal, and we are awed before your face--
For you are weird with wonder, with the grace
Of death's most delicate lilies are you crowned.

After the ranging sunset of Farewell--
When life's loved country fades, and hope is lorn,

Cometh the Wind from the garden, fragrant and full of sweet singing--
Under my tree where I sit cometh the Wind to confession.

"Out in the garden abides the Queen of the beautiful Roses--
Her do I love and to-night wooed her with passionate singing;
Told I my love in those songs, and answer she gave in her blushes--
She shall be bride of the Wind, and she is the Queen of the Roses!"

"Wind, there is spice in thy breath; thy rapture hath fragrance Sabaean!"

"Straight from my wooing I come--my lips are bedewed with her kisses--

If to see thee be to love thee,
If to love thee be to prize
Naught of earth or heaven above thee,
Nor to live but for those eyes:
If such love to mortal given,
Be wrong to earth, be wrong to heaven,
'Tis not for thee the fault to blame,
For from those eyes the madness came.
Forgive but thou the crime of loving
In this heart more pride 'twill raise
To be thus wrong with thee approving,
Than right with all a world to praise!

* * * * *

But say, while light these songs resound,

"But bending low, I whisper only this:
'Love, it is night.'"
--HARRY THURSTON PECK.


Love, it is night. The orb of day
Has gone to hit the cosmic hay.
Nocturnal voices now we hear.
Come, heart's delight, the hour is near
When Passion's mandate we obey.

I would not, sweet, the fact convey
In any crude and obvious way:
I merely whisper in your ear--
"Love, it is night!"

Candor compels me, pet, to say
That years my fading charms betray.
Tho' Love be blind, I grant it's clear

Air-"Come live with me and be my love."


Come wed with me and we will write,
My Blue of Blues, from morn till night.
Chased from our classic souls shall be
All thoughts of vulgar progeny;
And thou shalt walk through smiling rows
Of chubby duodecimos,
While I, to match thy products nearly,
Shall lie-in of a quarto yearly.
'Tis true, even books entail some trouble;
But live productions give one double.

Correcting children is such bother,--
While printers' devils correct the other.
Just think, my own Malthusian dear,

Florence.


No--'tis not the region where Love's to be found--
They have bosoms that sigh, they have glances that rove,
They have language a Sappho's own lip might resound,
When she warbled her best--but they've nothing like Love.

Nor is't that pure sentiment only they want,
Which Heaven for the mild and the tranquil hath made--
Calm, wedded affection, that home-rooted plant
Which sweetens seclusion and smiles in the shade;

That feeling which, after long years have gone by,
Remains like a portrait we've sat for in youth,