OW ORLD ! somewhat I have to say to thee.
O sin-sick, heart-sick, soul-sick, love-sick World!
So ailing art thou, both in part and particle,
That solid truth thy stomach ill digests.
Yet, since thou art my mother, I will love thee,
And heedless of thy frowns, “will speak right on.”

That which belongs to all men is least prized;
The thing most common is least understood.
That which is deep and silent is divine;
And there is nought on earth so craved, so common,
So misunderstood, or so divine, as Love.
When meted in proportion to man's need,

I send home your glove, my darling!
Darling! love and true!
Yester-eve left where you sat by me;
And my heart goes with it to you.

Goes with it all love and devotion,
To win sweet looks from your eyes,
Like the flower which, thirsting in Summer,
For the sweet rain at noon-day sighs.

I send it, yet fain would keep it,
For the little hand that, in mine,
Yester-eve so lovingly nestled,
When your kisses were sweeter than wine.

Come back soon!—I pine, my darling!
For the clasp of your hand again;

One forgets not the first dead he sorrowed over;
One forgets not the first kiss of the first lover.
Not the dust of ages could remembrance cover
How in Titian's golden kingdom first I strayed.

Oh, that Roman morning's azure, softly sifting
Through the gray, the while the rapt eye caught the rifting
Of the sun's rich fire where molten mists were drifting,
As one looks upon an opal gently swayed.

Ah! but in the palace there was sun more golden!
Art for once to Nature was no more beholden.
Man to his belovèd had the passion olden

Bonny Lassie dinna leave me
Losing thee would ever grieve me
If it be a sin to love thee
Why's the sun so bright above thee
Why's the sky so heavenly blue
My Jinney when I'm courting you
And when you go so dull's the scene
The simmer seems to lose its green
All wears the mist and mountain hue
When Jinneys gone there's naught to woo.

Nature puts on its mourning gown
And grass & leaves look black & brown
There's nothing lovely nothing sweet
Sin I wi Jinney failed to meet
The lark is silent all the day

When I am old,
And sadly steal apart,
Into the dark and cold,
Friend of my heart!
Remember, if you can,
Not him who lingers, but that other man,
Who loved and sang, and had a beating heart,—
When I am old!

When I am old,
And all Love's ancient fire
Be tremulous and cold:
My soul's desire!
Remember, if you may,
Nothing of you and me but yesterday,
When heart on heart we bid the years conspire
To make us old.

When I am old,
And every star above
Be pitiless and cold:
My life's one love!

As some great monarch in triumphal train
Holds in his thrall an hundred captive kings,
Guard thou the loves of all my vanished springs
To wait as handmaids on thy sweet disdain.
And thou shalt wear their tresses like bright rings,
For their defeat perpetuates thy reign!
With thy imperious girlhood vie in vain
The pallid hosts of all old poignant things.

Place on thy brow the mystic diadem
With women's faces cunningly embossed,
Whereon each memory glitters like a gem;
But mark that mine were regal loves that lost

Through the locust-husk
world do we pass twice over?
What am I doing,
sleeping all alone at night,
never meeting my young love?

‘Fear not, O maidens, shivering
As bunches of the dew-drenched leaves
In the calm moonlight . . . it is the cold sends quivering
My voice, a little nightingale that grieves.

Now Time beats not, and dead Love is forgotten . . .
The spirit too is dead and dank and rotten,

And I forget the moment when I ran
Between my lover and the sworded man—

Blinded with terror lest I lose his heart.
The sworded man dropped, and I saw depart

Love and my lover and my life . . . he fled
And I was strung and hung upon the tree.

In thy heart of yore, Beloved, More concern for lovers' care was;
Yea, with us thy loving-kindness Talk of people everywhere was.

Be that commerce of the night-time Aye remembered when of lovers'
Bond and circle and Love's myst'ries Talk among the sweet-lipped fair was!

Though those moonfaced lovelings' beauty Ravished heart and faith and reason,
Yet our love for pleasant nature, Grace and fashions debonair was.

If the shade of the Beloved On the lover fell, what wonder?
Her we needed and desirous She of us, to make the pair, was.

Blind, glorious, aged martyr, saint, and sage!
The poet's mission God revealed to thee,
To lift men's souls to H IM —to make them free;—
With tyranny and grossness war to wage—
A worshipper of truth and love to be—
To reckon all things nought but these alone;—
To nought but mind and truth to bow the knee—
To make the soul a love-exalted throne!
Man of the noble spirit—Milton, thou
All this didst do! A living type thou wert
Of what the soul of man to be may grow—
The pure perfection of the love-fraught heart!