I SOUGHT my love in yonder flower,
Appearing like an angel star;
I sought her vainly, hour by hour,
Though she be fair as angels are.

I sought my love by yonder tree,
All musical with summer birds;
And sweet the songs, but not for me:
They could not give her sweeter words.

I sought her when the stars gleam'd west,
By stream that glides the veined round;
And I saw heaven in its breast,
And thought at last my love was found!

But, ah! each hope inconstant pass'd;
Nor flower, nor tree, nor streamlet's fall:

If you are you—
Then God is good,
Less merciful, less wise
Can scarce be He who made our mould
And doth our sum comprise;
His absolute must wide include
Our greater as His less,
Nor work of His surpass His will
In power to love and bless.

If you are you—
God must be God,
And guessing from your heart He made,
I hail you omen of His love
And cease to be afraid.

When the rose becomes incarnate in the lips, of woman, sweet
Will the night's arms be to dream in and the morn's embrace to meet:
When the sea's soul pours its pureness through the eyes of woman, then
Will the angel flash forth godlike through the answering eyes of men.

Woe to man who sees too clearly all love's mystic inner deeps,
For eternal pain pursues him when he wakes or when he sleeps;
Anguish changeless, everlasting,—for he knows love's heaven too well
And he seeks on earth to find it, and he finds not heaven, but hell.

Down in green valleys a town in Yorkshire,
I lived at my ease and was free from all care.
I lived at my ease and I got a sweetheart now,
He's my bonny Scotch laddie and his bonnet so blue.

A regiment of soldiers, oh you soon shall hear,
From England to Ireland they did both steer.
There is one lad among them and I do love so true,
For very well he becomes his bonnet so blue.

'Twas early one morning she rose from her bed,
She called to her Sally, her young waiting-maid,
‘Dress me as neat as your two hands can do,

Out of the tense awed darkness, my Frangepani comes;
Whilst the blades of Heaven flash round her, and the roll of thunder drums
My young heart leaps and dances, with exquisite joy and pain,
As storms within and storms without I meet my love in the rain.

“The rain is in love with you darling; it's kissing you everywhere,
Rain pattering over your small brown feet, rain in your curly hair;
Rain in the vale that your twin breasts make, as in delicate mounds they rise,
I hope there is rain in your heart, Frangepani, as rain half fills your eyes.”

The Gods require the thighes
Of Beeves for sacrifice;
Which rosted, we the steam
Must sacrifice to them:
Who though they do not eat,
Yet love the smell of meat.

Above,
The stars are bursting into bloom,
My love;
Below, unfolds the evening gloom.
Come, let us roam the long lane thro',
My love, just as we used to do.

The birds
Of twilight twitter, sweet and low,
And fly to rest, and homeward go
The herds.
Come, let the long lane lead us as it will,
My love, a-winding thro' the evening still.

Behold
How now the full-blown stars are spread,
Like large white lilies, overhead!
But fold
They must, and fade at gray daylight,
My love; they blossom but at night.

The moon,

N ELLIE , your hair of night, your eyes
Haunt me so far away,
Where are our words of love, our sighs,
Our kisses where are they?

The life that once was ours, the light
Of love, say not that they
Have gone for ever in the night,
Have wholly passed away!

Love , which in courts is but a toy for spleen,
Is a grave matter on the village green
The loving shepherd, laid upon the shelf,
Acts like a proper swain, and hangs himself:
The courtier sees his faithless fair another's,
And mutters with a shrug, ‘Well, I've two others’.

If thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the high Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered,—if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all who loved had left thee to thy doom,—
Oh, yet believe that, in that hollow vale
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven's sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,