If you had not been here
Or I had not chanced by—
Oh, let's not think of that, my dear,
And let's not even try;

For Spring fills all the year
And Love lights all the sky,
Since you—thank God!—are you, my dear,
And here, thank God! am I!

I love it, I love it, and who shall dare
To chide me for loving that old bike there?
I've treasured it long as a sainted prize,
And its battered old frame brings the tears to my eyes;
'Tis bound with a thousand bands to my heart,
Though the sprocket's bent and the links are apart.
Would you know the spell? My grandma sat there,
Upon that old saddle, and zipped through the air.
In childhood's hour I lingered near
That old machine, with listening ear,
For grandma's shrieks through the house would ring
If I even happened to touch the thing.

A VOICE in the scented night,—
A step where the rose-trees blow,—
O Love, and O Love's delight!

Cold star at the blue vault's height,
What is it that shakes you so?
A voice in the scented night!

She comes in her beauty bright,—
She comes in her young love's glow,—
O Love, and O Love's delight!

She bends from her casement white,
And she hears it, hushed and low,
A voice in the scented night.

And he climbs by that stairway slight,—
Her passionate R OMEO :—
O Love, and O Love's delight!

For it stirs us still in spite

Six months to six years added he remained
Upon this sinful earth, by sin unstained:
O blessèd Lord! whose mercy then removed
A Child whom every eye that looked on loved;
Support us, teach us calmly to resign
What we possessed, and now is wholly thine!

The ships are lying in the bay,
The gulls are swinging round their spars;
My soul as eagerly as they
Desires the margin of the stars.

So much do I love wandering,
So much I love the sea and sky,
That it will be a piteous thing
In one small grave to lie.

Ah, brief is Life,
Love's short, sweet way,
With dreamings rife,
And then—Good-day!

And Life is vain—
Hope's vague delight,
Grief's transient pain,
And then—Good-night!

Unknown love
Is as bitter a thing
As the maiden-lily
Which grows in the thickets
Of the summer moor.

O Time has a kiss
For every Miss
And a bed for every Trull!
But thou, my Dearie,
O! Come not near me,
Our love is a wheeling gull.
Lovely he flies 'twixt sea and skies,
He's a silly bird on land.
No wrath of black weathers
Will ruffle his feathers
Like the touch of a capturing hand.

Ah, let me forget!
For now my thoughts are as thick
as once
was my hair—
black then, but
now frosty
as Isonokami's sands.

Think you that I will drain the dregs of Love,
I who have quaffed the sweetness on its brink?
Now by the steadfast burning stars above,
Better to faint of thirst than thuswise drink.
What! shall we twain who saw love's glorious fires
Flame toward the sky and flush Heaven's self with light,
Crouch by the embers as the glow expires,
And huddle closer from mere dread of night?
No! cast love's goblet in oblivion's well,
Scatter love's ashes o'er the field of time!
Yet, ere we part, one kiss whereon to dwell
When life sounds senseless as some feeble rhyme.