A Jongleur Strayed | Page 3

luring child,
Moon matches little moon;
I must not be
beguiled,
With the honied tune:
Yet O to lay my head
Twixt
moon and moon!
'Twas so my sad heart said,
Only last June.
THE DRYAD
My dryad hath her hiding place
Among ten thousand trees.
She flies
to cover
At step of a lover,
And where to find her lovely face

Only the woodland bees
Ever discover,
Bringing her honey
From
meadows sunny,
Cowslip and clover.
Vainly on beech and oak I knock
Amid the silent boughs;
Then
hear her laughter,
The moment after,
Making of me her
laughing-stock
Within her hidden house.
The young moon with her wand of pearl
Taps on her hidden door,

Bids her beauty flower
In that woodland bower,
All white like a
mortal girl,
With moonshine hallowed o'er.
Yet were there thrice ten thousand trees
To hide her face from me,

Not all her fleeing

Should 'scape my seeing,
Nor all her ambushed
sorceries
Secure concealment be
For her bright being.
Yea! should she by the laddered pine
Steal to the stars on high,
Her

fairy whiteness,
Hidden in brightness,
Her hiding-place would so
out-shine
The constellated sky,
She could not 'scape the eye
Of
my pursuing,
Nor her fawn-foot lightness
Out-speed my wooing.
MAY IS BACK
May is back, and You and I
Are at the stream again--
The leaves are
out,
And all about
The building birds begin
To make a merry din:

May is back, and You and I
Are at the dream again.
May is back, and You and I
Lie in the grass again,--
The butterfly

Flits painted by,
The bee brings sudden fear,
Like people talking
near;
May is back, and You and I
Are lad and lass again.
May is back, and You and I
Are heart to heart again,--
In God's
green house
We make our vows
Of summer love that stays

Faithful through winter days;
May is back, and You and I
Shall
never part again.
MOON-MARKETING
Let's go to market in the moon,
And buy some dreams together,

Slip on your little silver shoon,
And don your cap and feather;
No
need of petticoat or stocking--
No one up there will think it shocking.
Across the dew,
Just I and you,
With all the world behind us;

Away from rules,
Away from fools,
Where nobody can find us.
TWO BIRTHDAYS
Your birthday, sweetheart, is my birthday too,
For, had you not been
born,
I who began to live beholding you

Up early as the morn,

That day in June beside the rose-hung stream,
Had never lived at all--

We stood, do you remember? in a dream
There by the water-fall.
You were as still as all the other flowers
Under the morning's spell;


Sudden two lives were one, and all things "ours"--
How we can never
tell.
Surely it had been fated long ago--
What else, dear, could we
think?
It seemed that we had stood for ever so,
There by the river's
brink.
And all the days that followed seemed as days
Lived side by side
before,
Strangely familiar all your looks and ways,
The very frock
you wore;
Nothing seemed strange, yet all divinely new;
Known to
your finger tips,
Yet filled with wonder every part of you,
Your hair,
your eyes, your lips.
The wise in love say love was ever thus
Through endless Time and
Space,
Heart linked to heart, beloved, as with us,
Only one
face--one face--
Our own to love, however fair the rest;
'Tis so true
lovers are,
For ever breast to breast,
On--on--from star to star.
SONG
My eye upon your eyes--
So was I born,
One far-off day in Paradise,

A summer morn;
I had not lived till then,
But, wildered, went,

Like other wandering men,
Nor what Life meant
Knew I till then.
My hand within your hand--
So would I live,
Nor would I ask to
understand
Why God did give
Your loveliness to me,
But I would
pray
Worthier of it to be,
By night and day,
Unworthy me!
My heart upon your heart--
So would I die,
I cannot think that God
will part
Us, you and I;
The work he did undo,
That summer morn;

I lived, and would die too,
Where I was born,
Beloved, in you.
THE FAITHFUL LOVER
All beauty is but thee in echo-shapes,
No lovely thing but echoes
some of thee,
Vainly some touch of thy perfection apes,
Sighing as
fair as thou thyself to be;
Therefore, be not disquieted that I
On

other forms turn oft my wandering gaze,
Nor deem it anywise
disloyalty:
Nay! 'tis the pious fervour of my eye,
That seeks thy
face in every other face.
As in the mirrored salon of a queen,

Flashes from glass to glass, as she walks by,
In sweet reiteration
still--the queen!
So is the world for thee to walk in, sweet;
But to
see thee is all things to have seen.
And, as the moon in every crystal
lake,
Walking the heaven with little silver feet,
Sees each bright
copy her reflection take,
And every dew-drop holds its little glass,

To catch her loveliness as she doth pass,
So do all things make haste
to copy thee.
I, then, to see thee thus over and over,
Am wistful too
all lovely shapes to see,
For each thus makes me more and more thy
lover.
LOVE'S TENDERNESS
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