If we had met when leaves were green,
And fate to us less hard had proved,
And naught had been of what has been,
We might have loved as none have loved.

If we had met as girl and boy,
The world of pleasure at our feet,
Our joy had been a perfect joy;
We might have met, but did not meet.

Nor less in youth's full passionate day,
A woman you and I a man,
We might have loved and found a way
No laws could check, no vows could ban.

Too late! Too sad! A year ago,
Even then perhaps, in spite of fate

29

If those I loved were lost
The Crier's voice would tell me—
If those I loved were found
The bells of Ghent would ring—

Did those I loved repose
The Daisy would impel me.
Philip—when bewildered
Bore his riddle in!

If there were any power in human love,
Or in th' intensest longing of the heart,
Then should the oceans and the lands that part
Ye from my sight all unprevailing prove,
Then should the yearning of my bosom bring
Ye here, through space and distance infinite;
And life 'gainst love should be a baffled thing,
And circumstance 'gainst will lose all its might.
Shall not a childless mother's misery
Conjure the earth with such a potent spell—
A charm so desperate—as to compel
Nature to yield to her great agony?
Can I not think of ye till ye arise,

If I might only love my God and die!
But now He bids me love Him and live on,
Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,
The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.
My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high,
And I forget how summer glowed and shone,
While autumn grips me with its fingers wan
And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.
When autumn passes then must winter numb,
And winter may not pass a weary while,
But when it passes spring shall flower again;
And in that spring who weepeth now shall smile,

If love now reynyd as it hath bene
And war rewardit as it hath sene,

Nobyll men then wold suer enserch
All ways wherby thay myght it rech;

But envy reynyth with such dysdayne,
And causith lovers owtwardly to refrayne,

Which puttes them to more and more
Inwardly most grevous and sore;

The faut in whome I cannot sett;
But let them tell which love doth gett.

To lovers I put now suer this cace -
Which of ther loves doth get them grace?

And unto them which doth it know
Better than do I, I thynk it so.

If love now reigned as it hath been
And were rewarded as it hath sin,
Noble men then would sure ensearch
All ways whereby they might it reach,
But envy reigneth with such disdain
And causeth lovers outwardly to refrain,
Which puts them to more and more
Inwardly most grievous and sore.
The fault in whom I cannot set,
But let them tell which love doth get--

To lovers I put now sure this case:
Which of their loves doth get them grace?

And unto them which doth it know

If love be holy, if that mystery
O co-united hearts be sacrament;
If the unbounded goodness have infused
A sacred ardour of a mutual love
Into our species; if those amorous joys,
Those sweets of life, those comforts even in death,
Spring from a cause above our reason's reach;
If that clear flame deduce its heat from heaven,
'Tis, like its cause, eternal; always one,
As in th' instiller of divinest love,
Unchanged by time, immortal, maugre death.
But, oh! 'tis grown a figment; love, a jest:
A comic poesy: the soul of man is rotten,

If it should come to be,
This proof of you and me,
This type and sign
Of hours that smiled and shone,
And yet seemed dead and gone
As old-world wine:

Of Them Within the Gate
Ask we no richer fate,
No boon above,
For girl child or for boy,
My gift of life and joy,
Your gift of love.

If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe

IF I had loved you more God would have had pity;
He would never have left me here in this desolate place,
Left me to go on my knees to the door of Heaven
Crying in vain for a little sight of your face.

How could I know that the earth would be dark without you?
For you were always the lover and I the friend.
Now if there were any hope that I might find you
I would go seeking you to the world's end.

'God is a jealous God. You have loved too wildly,
You have loved too well!' one said.
I bowed my head, but my heart in scorn was crying