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.

C HLORIS , whilst thou and I were free,
Wedded to nought but Liberty,
How sweetly happy did we live,
How free to promise, free to give?

Then, Monarchs of our selves, we might
Love here, or there, to change delight,
And ty'd to none, with all dispence,
Paying each Love its recompence.

But in that happy freedom, we
Were so improvidently free,
To give away our liberties;

And now in fruitless sorrow pine
At what we are, what might have bin,
Had thou, or I, or both been wise.

Under dusky laurel leaf,
—Scarlet leaf of rose,
I lie prone, who have known
—All a woman knows.

Love and grief and motherhood,
—Fame and mirth and scorn—
These are all shall befall
—Any woman born.

Jewel-laden are my hands,
—Tall my stone above—
Do not weep that I sleep,
—Who was wise in love.

Where I walk, a shadow gray
—Through gray asphodel,
I am glad, who have had
—All that Life could tell.

'Twas granted:—but the bitter god of Love,
As in revenge for some disparagement,
Left us to strive, inextricably blent,
Before we knew in truth for what we strove,
Or why we went, unwillingly, who went,
Or whether driven, or who he was that drove.
The countless haps that draw vague heart to heart,
The countless hands that push true hearts apart—
Of these we nothing recked, and nothing knew.
The wonder of the world, the faint surmise,
The clouded looks of hate, the harrowing eyes,
But pierced and pinned together: 'twas one to us.

A poet's moonshine! Yes, for love must lend
Answer to reason, though 'tis bitter breath.
Better wild roses died their natural death
Than evilly or idly them to rend.
The girl was fair as flower the moon beneath,
Gentle and good, and constant to her friend,
Yet out of her own place, not so complete:
Was wedded to her kind—had leave to lack,
But old associations rarely slip.
Tight as a stem of grass within its sheath,
You yet may draw and nibble, touch the sweet
With the tip tongue and browse the tender end
Half-vacantly; but not to be put back,

G OD'S Silence! Holiest speech that is
Is but a dew-fall out of this;
And human Love's own tongues of bliss
But broken language caught from His.

Why should we question, though our cry—
“Lord, hear me—answer, or I die!”—
Seems echoed from an empty sky?
He hears—He answers, utterly.

“Lord, answer!” And with shuddering breath,
As those already doomed to death,
We wait for Him who rescueth
The very bird that perisheth.

O sword of doubt, two-edged with pain,
That cuts the quivering heart in twain!
As if His Love could ever wane!