I am too proud of loving thee, too proud
Of the sweet months and years that now have end,
To feign a heart indifferent to this loss,
Too thankful-happy that the gods allowed
Our orbits cross,
Beloved and lovely friend;
And though I wend
Lonely henceforth along a road grown gray,
I shall not be all lonely on the way,
Companioned with the attar of thy rose,
Though in my garden it no longer blows.

Thou canst not give elsewhere thy gifts to me,
Or only seem to give;
Yea, not so fugitive
The glory that hath hallowed me and thee,

Shadows! the only shadows that I know
Are happy shadows of the light of you,
The radiance immortal shining through
Your sea-deep eyes up from the soul below;
Your shadow, like a rose's, on the grass
Where your feet pass.

The shadow of the dimple in your chin,
The shadow of the lashes of your eyes,
As on your cheek, soft as a moth, it lies;
And, as a church, I softly enter in
The solemn twilight of your mighty hair,
Down falling there.

These are Love's shadows, Love knows none but these:

Thou shall not me persuade
This love of ours
Can in a moment fade,
Like summer flowers;

That a swift word or two,
In angry haste,
Our heaven shall undo,
Our hearts lay waste.

For a poor flash of pride,
A cold word spoken,
Love shall not be denied,
Or long troth broken.

Yea; wilt thou not relent?
Be mine the wrong,
No more the argument,
Dear love, prolong.

The summer days go by,
Cease that sweet rain,
Those angry crystals dry,
Be friends again.

So short a time at best
Is ours to play,

I will walk down to the valley
And lay my head in her breast,
Where are two white doves,
The Queen of Love's,
In a silken nest;
And, all the afternoon,
They croon and croon
The one word "Rest!"
And a little stream
That runs thereby
Sings "Dream!"
Over and over
It sings--
"O lover,
Dream!"

You often ask me, love, how much I love you,
Bidding my fancy find
An answer to your mind;
I say: "Past count, as there are stars above you."
You shake your head and say,
"Many and bright are they,
But that is not enough."

Again I try:
"If all the leaves on all the trees
Were counted over,
And all the waves on all the seas,
More times your lover,
Yea! more than twice ten thousand times am I."
"'Tis not enough," again you make reply.

"How many blades of grass," one day I said,

Deem not my love is only for the bloom,
The honey and the marble, that is You;
Tis so, Belovéd, common loves consume
Their treasury, and vanish like the dew.
Nay, but my love's a thing that's far more true;
For little loves a little hour hath room,
But not for us their brief and trivial doom,
In a far richer soil our loving grew,
From deeper wells of being it upsprings;
Nor shall the wildest kiss that makes one mouth,
Draining all nectar from the flowered world,
Slake its divine unfathomable drouth;

I.

Oh, fair apple tree, and oh, fair apple tree,
As heavy and sweet as the blossoms on thee,
My heart is heavy with love.
It wanteth but a little wind
To make the blossoms fall;
It wanteth but a young lover
To win me heart and all.

II.

I send my love letters
By larks on the wing;
My love sends me letters
When nightingales sing.

Without reading or writing,
Their burden we know:
They only say, "Love me,
Who love you so."

III.

And if they ask for me, brother,
Say I come never home,

We spoke of a rest in a fairy knowe of the North, but he,
Far from the firths of the East, and the racing tides of the West,
Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite Southern Sea,
Weary and well content in his grave on the Vaea crest.

Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales,
Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight,
Looks o'er the labours of men in the plain and the hill; and the
sails
Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the
night.

Winds of the West and the East in the rainy season blow

[The author (if he can be so styled) awoke from a restless sleep,
with the first stanza of the following piece in his mind. He has
no memory of composing it, either awake or asleep. He had long
known the perhaps Pythagorean fable of the bean-juice, but
certainly never thought of applying it to an amorous
correspondence! The remaining verses are the contribution of his
Conscious Self!]

ELLE.

I cannot write, I may not write,
I dare not write to thee,
But look on the face of the moon by night,
And my letters shalt thou see.

From the brake the Nightingale
Sings exulting to the Rose;
Though he sees her waxing pale
In her passionate repose,
While she triumphs waxing frail,
Fading even while she glows;
Though he knows
How it goes -
Knows of last year's Nightingale
Dead with last year's Rose.

Wise the enamoured Nightingale,
Wise the well-beloved Rose!
Love and life shall still prevail,
Nor the silence at the close
Break the magic of the tale
In the telling, though it shows -
Who but knows
How it goes! -
Life a last year's Nightingale,