Not through the rose-hung honeyed ways
Of kisses soft and songs and lays
Thou followest me,—
But by far lonely foam-filled bays
Of sorrow's sea.

Through self-denial and the extreme
Repression of love's fiery dream
Thou followest on:
Far heights before us rise and gleam,—
We climb alone.

Not ours the daily chequered life,
Chequered but sweet, of man and wife,
But ours the strange
Wild ways of lonely constant strife
That knows no change.

Not ours to meet save in the bliss
Of sacrifice, the pale-lipped kiss
From cross to cross:

I loathe that I did love,
In youth that I thought sweet;
As time requires, for my behove,
Methinks they are not meet.

My lusts they do me leave,
My fancies all be fled,
And tract of time begins to weave
Grey hairs upon my head.

For age with stealing steps
Hath clawed me with his crutch,
And lusty life away she leaps,
As there had been none such.

My Muse doth not delight
Me as she did before;

My hand and pen are not in plight,
As they have been of yore.

For reason me denies
This youthly idle rhyme;

Lad 's love and lavender,
Rosemary and rue,
I picked them in a posy
And I offered them to you.

It was only lad's love
But surely it was true,
Only wild gray lavender,
But fragrant as it grew.

I plucked the sprig of rosemary
For memory of you,
And was it to complete the tale
I tied it up with rue?

Lad's love and lavender
Rosemary and rue,
I picked them in a posy
And I offered it to you.

The spring has passed,—the spring-time of my strain,
The spring of thy fair life. Now summer round us
Beams, and the laughing-eyed swift loves have found us
Who gaily tread in his impassioned train.
Thine hair is fragrant with the smell of flowers
Still,—but no flowers of simpler spring remain;
Still art thou beauteous as in those first hours
Of love,—but no lost hours again we gain.

We pass towards perfect summer. Our delight
Is hidden for us among the full-leaved trees,
And 'mid the passion of the August night,

Such joy it was with Love to walk!
The month it was the month of May
When we with Love began to talk.
Such joy it was with Love to walk
We did not see Fate's shadow stalk
Beside us, where flowers hid the way,
Such joy it was with Love to walk—
The month it was the month of May.

Come snow, come hail, come darkness drear;
Brood over earth God's darkest cloud,
While fiercely strikes the lightning's spear
And thunder echoes loud.

I shall not falter in my ways,
He will not stay me save by death,
Through all my pains I'll sing her praise
As long as I have breath.

Love is His lord as well as mine,
In golden rain He once did pour,
Obedient to love's word divine,
And pierced the brazen bower.

“O Life ! hast thou misled me with thy smiles?”
I said, “Are all thy gifts so vain—
Mirages of the fabled Happy Isles,
Hung over wide, bleak seas of pain?
Unfathomable Doom! if in thy deeps,
Some compensating secret sleeps,
Oh, let it not be wholly lost;
Give me to see and know thine uttermost!”

Then came two Spirits, like in form and face—
So very like that one might seem
The younger sister with a fresher grace,
And eyes of brighter hue and gleam;
And one with matron movement, grave and slow,
Pale, beautiful, unsmiling brow,

Shee that holdes me under the lawes of love
on whome my mornefull vearse so ofte complaines
For those straunge griefs that I through[h]e wronge do prove
she is the courte wherin my lyfe remaynes
Shee is my prince off whom I woulde desarve
and shee alone to me can favor lende
Shee hath for courtiers thowsands that doo serve
and onely on her eyes for lookes attende
Unto her love wee woulde as fayne aspire
as others wolde in Courte to honors ryse
And as disgrace makes courtiers to retyre
so doo her frownes cause malecontents likewise

Give me the boon of love!
I ask no more for fame;
Far better one unpurchased heart
Than glory's proudest name.
Why wake a fever in the blood,
Or damp the spirit now,
To gain a wreath whose leaves shall wave
Above a withered brow?

Give me the boon of love!
Ambition's meed is vain;
Dearer affection's earnest smile
Than honor's richest train.
I'd rather lean upon a breast
Responsive to my own,
Than sit pavilioned gorgeously
Upon a kingly throne.

Like the Chaldean sage,
Fame's worshippers adore

Two birds within one nest;
Two hearts within one breast;
Two spirits in one fair,
Firm league of love and prayer,
Together bound for aye, together blest.

An ear that waits to catch
A hand upon the latch;
A step that hastens its sweet rest to win;
A world of care without,
A world of strife shut out,
A world of love shut in.