A butterfly alights
On a bright green hedge,
Sways with grace
On its very edge:
Like an airy spectre it seems to cling,
Then, off again upon the wing.

Ah, Love, is yours
The same wily art,
Poised with grace
On the edge of my heart,
Just for a moment there to cling,
Then off again upon the wing?

The sweet-mouthed shore hath wed the singing sea,
And winds are joyous with their kissing chime.
The voice-beseeching rapture of the time
An utterance hath found in every tree,
In bursts of happy rhyme.

All nature loves, and loves are all fulfilled.
Me only hope deferred and waitings long
Keep silent; me these rich completions wrong:
Ah! when shall I have leave my lips to gild
With a sweet marriage-song?

From scenes of glad love crownéd, long gone down
The droning-billowed reaches of the years,
The lotus-flutes are shrilling in mine ears,

But yesternight we laughed to view
The stars that sailed in seas of blue—
To-day we wake 'neath greyer skies,
To look on life with diff'rent eyes,
To look on life with diff'rent eyes, with diff'rent eyes—

Alas! how many stars are set,
For which we're longing, watching yet,
O useless hope! O eyes that burn!
The stars you love will not return,
The stars you love will not return.

O WHA 's that at my chamber door?—
“Fair widow, are ye wawking?”—
Auld carle, your suit give o'er,
Your love lies a' in tawking:
Gi'e me the lad that 's young and tight,
Sweet like an April meadow;
'Tis sic as he can bless the sight
And bosom of a widow.

“O widow! wilt thou let me in,
“I 'm pawky, wise, and thrifty,
“And come of a right gentle kin;
“I 'm little mair than fifty.”
Daft carle, dit your mouth,
What signifies how pawky,
Or gentle born ye be; but youth,
In love you 're but a gawky.

When your head leans back slowly, and gazing eyes
Muse earnest upon mine and starry swim
With depths unfathomed that still well and rise,
And the words fail, and sight with love grows dim,
Whence comes that almost sadness, almost wound
Of joy, whose thoughts sink like the wearied flight
Of birds on seas, lost in love's deeps profound,
Inscrutable as odours blown through night?

We know not: and we know not whence love rose
Pouring its beauty over us, as the moon
On this dim garden rises, and none knows
Where she was wandering, those blind nights of June.

She sang a song of death and battle,
Through which one heard the cannon roll.
They said, “O wondrous gift of fancy,
The glorious dower of poet-soul!”

She sang a song of love and passion—
Love's land, she sang, was very fair.
They said no more of wondrous fancy,
They said, “She lays her own heart bare.”

The one
I glimpsed
is just so
hard to catch—
like
those monkeys
vainly
stretching out
their hands
for the moon
in a valley pool.

We must buy coal.
On account of the wind
the flowers are constantly losing their petals.

Horseman,
take me to the best firewood store.
At present the chill wind is blowing too hard,
intent on leaving nothing,
not a single word of human speech.

I go to the hearth to light the fire,
but it's full of a pool of golden spittle.
I head southwards in search of live coals but
they tell me some Greek fellow died for that long ago.

I shook my head
and told them “No.”
For the sake of the future,

I will break the back
of this long, midwinter night,
folding it double,
cold beneath my spring quilt,
that I may draw out
the night, should my love return.

Now the lovely moon is wilted,
——Lost her petals down the sky.
——Sorrily the wind goes by;
Rosebuds where the branches tilted
——Yield their flowers with a sigh.

June, the wonderment of blossom,
——With her necklace' thirsty pearls,
——With her tearful eyes and girl's
Changing, ever changing bosom,
——With the hot sun in her curls—

This is last of all the June-nights.—
——Let us softly speak of living,
——Thou whose life was but forgiving,
I that in the passèd moonlight's
——Shadow, moved thee with my grieving.

Memory saddèns our caresses.