Queen of all streets, you stand alway
Lovely by dusk or dark or day.
Cruellest of streets that I do know,
I love you wheresoe'er I go.

The daytime knows your lyric wonder:
Your tunes that rhyme and chime and thunder,
And exiles vision with delight
Your million-blossomed charm of night.

Sweet frivolous frock and fragrant face
Your shadow-fretted pavements trace;
And all about your haunted mile
Hangs a soft air, a girlish smile.

But other steps make echo here,
With curse and prayer and wasted tear;
And under the silver wings of sleep

OH , loving and forgiving—
Ye angel-words of earth,
Years were not worth the living
If ye toOHad not birth!
Oh, loving and forbearing—
How sweet your mission here;
The grief that ye are sharing
Hath blessings in its tear.

Oh, stern and unforgiving—
Ye evil words of life,
That mock the means of living
With never-ending strife.
Oh, harsh and unrepenting—
How would ye meet the grave,
If Heaven, as unrelenting,
Forbore not, nor forgave!

Oh, loving and forgiving—
Sweet sisters of the soul,
In whose celestial living

There is a country full of wine
And liquor of the sun,
Where sap is running all the year,
And spring is never done,
Where all is good as it is fair,
And love and will are one.
Old age may never come there,
But ever in today
The people talk as in a dream
And laugh slow time away.

But would you stay as now you are,
Or as a year ago?
Oh, not as then, for then how small
The wisdom we did owe!
Or if forever as today,
How little we could know!

Then welcome age, and fear not sorrow;
Today's no better than tomorrow.

Down in a garden, sat my dearest love;
Gay saffron flowers grew all around her;
The bluest sky shone in the heavens above:
Nay! had, but thus, the bright-limbed Cynthius found her,
He would have loved her, so that she had been
His Daphne, and his laurels green.

I leave the marts where gold, where silver's won,
For places where their hues alone are seen,
In yellow flowers, that burnish in the sun—
And white, that silver-tip the May-banks green.
And on his scrambled heaps the miser's eyne,
Amorous of his bane, did never gloat
With half of my delight when as I note
The moonlight silvering the waters sheen,
And herein am I richer far and wiser
Than him who barters life for Commerce' wealth,
And as he groweth rich turns poor and miser,
Losing the life of life—delight and health—

Full well it may be seen
To such as understand,
How some there be that ween
They have their wealth at hand:
Through love's abusèd band
But little do they see
The abuse wherein they be.

Of love there is a kind
Which kindleth by abuse,
As in a feeble mind
Whom fancy may induce
By love's deceitful use
To follow the fond lust
And proof of a vain trust.

As I myself may say,
By trial of the same,
No wight can well bewray
The falsehood love can frame.
I say, twixt grief and game,
There is no living man

I was a child with all a child's wild prayers,
That followed Love yet ever saw him flee,
His splendid feet on-speeding silently;
His wings gold tinctured spread athwart life's stairs
Ascending ever, and yet unawares
Oft turning his fair face and suddenly
Fixing his deep eyes smilingly on me:
So climbing girlhood caught at unguessed cares

But one Spring day Love halted in his flight
And straight let flash an arrow at my heart,
So that I swooned, who strove to reach his side …
When I awoke, a sea of saffron light

Oh swell my bosom deeper with thy love,
That I some river's widening mouth may be;
And ever on for many a mile above
May flow the floods that enter from thy sea;
And may they not retreat as tides of earth,
Save but to show from Thee that they have flown,
Soon may my spirit find that better birth,
Where the retiring wave is never known;
But Thou dost flow through every channel wide,
With all a Father's love in every soul;
A stream that knows no ebb, a swelling tide
That rolls forever on and finds no goal,
Till in the hearts of all shall opened be

Turiddu, thee, this woman loved,
With all her tender, melting charms;
See how she wept, and laughed, and clung
In the close shelter of thy arms.

Turiddu, now the woman hates,
Silent the wood-dove's cooing note,
Look, lest in blinded fury she
Shall leap and clutch thy tawny throat.

Shepherd , wilt thou take counsel of the bird
That oft hath hearkened, from this leafy lair,
To love's entreaty, and the parting word?—
Sue not so humbly to the haughty fair.
Pipe in her praise upon thine oaten straw,
And pipe the louder when she says thee nay;
Swear that her lightest wish to thee is law,
But break the law twice twenty times a day.
Trust not to argument, or thou 'rt undone;
But calmly, gently, when she doth protest
Her course is East, impel her to the West;
Approve her way, but lead her in thine own.