English Poems | Page 5

sun on the meadows to think of her;
O sweet as violets in early spring

The flower-girls to the city bring,
O, healing-bright to wintry eyes

As primrose-gold 'neath northern skies--
But O for fit thing to
compare
With the joy I have in the thought of her!
So all day long
doth her holy face
Bring fragrance to the barren place,
And
whensoe'er it comes nearest me,
My loom it weaveth busily.
Some days there be when the loom is still
And my soul is sad as an
autumn hill,
But how to tell the blessed time
When my heart is one
glowing prayer of rhyme!
Think on the humming afternoon
Within
some busy wood in June,
When nettle patches, drunk with the sun,

Are fiery outposts of the shade;
While gnats keep up a dizzy reel,

And the grasshopper, perched upon his blade,
Loud drones his fairy

threshing-wheel:--
Hour when some poet-wit might feign
The
drowsy tune of the throbbing air
The weaving of the gossamer
In
secret nooks of wood and lane--
The gossamer, silk night-robes of the
flowers,
Fluttered apart by amorous morning hours.
Yea, as the
weaving of the gossamer,
If truly that the mystic golden boom,
Is
the strange rapture of my hidden loom,
As I sit in the light of the
thought of her;
And it weaveth, weaveth, day by day,
This
parti-coloured roundelay;
Weaving for ease of misery,
Weaving this
rhyme of my lady and me,
Weaving, weaving this warp of rhyme

For lovers in the after-time.
My lady, lover, may never be mine
In the same sweet way that thine
is thine,
My lady and I may never stand
By the holy altar hand in
hand,
My lady and I may never rest
Through the golden midnight
breast to breast,
Nor share long days of happy light
Sweet moving
in each other's sight:
Yea, even must we ever miss
The honey of the
chastest kiss.
III
But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love,
nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief--but try
Some metre like a sky,

Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet
When I, thy master, shall
have come to die.
Twitter and tweet
Thy carollings
Of little things,
Of fair and sweet;
For it is meet,
O robin red!
That little theme
Hath little song,
That little head
Hath little dream,
And long.

But we have starry business, such a grief
As Autumn's, dead by some
forgotten sheaf,
While all the distance echoes of the wain;
Grief as
an ocean's for some sudden isle
Of living green that stayed with it a
while,
Then to oblivious deluge plunged again!
Grief as of Alps
that yearn but never reach,
Grief as of Death for Life, of Night for
Day:
Such grief, O Song, how hast thou strength to teach,
How
hope to make assay?
IV
ONCE
Once we met, and then there came
Like a Pentecostal flame,
A word;
And I said not,
Only thought,
She heard!
All I never say but sing,
Worshipping;
Wrapt in the
hidden tongue
Of an ambiguous song.
How we met what need to say?
When or where,
Years ago or
yesterday,
Here or there.
All the song is--once we met,
She and I;

Once, but never to forget,
Till we die.
All the song is that we meet
Never now--
'Hast thou yet forgotten,
sweet?'
'Love, hast thou?'
V
THE DAY OF THE TWO DAFFODILS
'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said;
'O yes, but see my crocuses,'
said she.
And so we entered in and sat at talk
Within a little parlour
bowered about
With garden-noises, filled with garden scent,
As
some sweet sea-shell rings with pearly chimes
And sighs out
fragrance of its mother's breast.

We sat at talk, and all the afternoon
Whispered about in changing
silences
Of flush and sudden light and gathering shade,
As though
some Maestro drew out organ stops
Somewhere in heaven. As two
within a boat
On the wide sea we sat at talk, the hours
Lapping
unheeded round us as the waves.
And as such two will ofttimes pause
in speech,
Gaze at high heaven and draw deep to their hearts
The
infinite azure,