Rose and Roof-Tree | Page 6

grain.
Even so my Love may bring me joy or woe,
Both measureless, but
either counted gain
Since given by her. For pain and pleasure flow

Like tides upon us of the self-same sea.
Tears are the gems of joy and
misery!
IV.
THE LOVER'S YEAR
Thou art my morning, twilight, noon, and eve,
My Summer and my
Winter, Spring and Fall;
For Nature left on thee a touch of all
The
moods that come to gladden or to grieve
The heart of Time, with
purpose to relieve
From lagging sameness. So do these forestall
In
thee such o'erheaped sweetnesses as pall
Too swiftly, and the taster
tasteless leave.
Scenes that I love to me always remain
Beautiful, whether under
summer's sun
Beheld, or, storm-dark, stricken across with rain.
So,
through all humors, thou 'rt the same sweet one:
Doubt not I love thee

well in each, who see
Thy constant change is changeful constancy.
V.
NEW WORLDS.
With my beloved I lingered late one night.
At last the hour when I
must leave her came:
But, as I turned, a fear I could not name

Possessed me that the long sweet evening might
Prelude some sudden
storm, whereby delight
Should perish. What if Death, ere dawn,
should claim
One of us? What, though living, not the same
Each
should appear to each in morning-light?
Changed did I find her, truly, the next day:
Ne'er could I see her as of
old again.
That strange mood seemed to draw a cloud away,
And let
her beauty pour through every vein
Sunlight and life, part of me.
Thus the lover
With each new morn a new world may discover.
VI.
WEDDING-NIGHT.
At night, with shaded eyes, the summer moon
In tender meditation
downward glances
At the dark earth, far-set in dim expanses,
And,
welcomer than blazoned gold of noon,
Down through the air her
steady lights are strewn.
The breezy forests sigh in moonlit trances,

And the full-hearted poet, waking, fancies
The smiling hills will
break in laughter soon.
Oh thus, thou gentle Nature, dost thou shine
On me to-night. My very
limbs would melt,
Like rugged earth beneath yon ray divine,
Into
faint semblance of what they have felt:
Thine eye doth color me, O
wife, O mine,
With peace that in thy spirit long hath dwelt!
LOVE'S DEFEAT.

A thousand times I would have hoped,
A thousand times protested;

But still, as through the night I groped,
My torch from me was
wrested,
and wrested.
How often with a succoring cup
Unto the hurt I hasted!
The
wounded died ere I came up;
My cup was still untasted,--
Untasted.
Of darkness, wounds, and harsh disdain
Endured, I ne'er repented.

'T is not of these I would complain:
With these I were contented,--
Contented.
Here lies the misery, to feel
No work of love completed;
In
prayerless passion still to kneel,
And mourn, and cry: "Defeated
Defeated!"
MAY AND MARRIAGE.
THE LOVER WHO THINKS.
Dost thou remember, Love, those hours
Shot o'er with random rainy
showers,
When the bold sun would woo coy May?
She smiled, then
wept--and looked another way.
We, learning from the sun and season,
Together plotted joyous
treason
'Gainst maiden majesty, to give
Each other troth, and
henceforth wedded live.
But love, ah, love we know is blind!
Not always what they seek they
find
When, groping through dim-lighted natures,
Fond lovers look
for old, ideal statures.

What then? Is all our purpose lost?
The balance broken, since Fate
tossed
Uneven weights? Oh well beware
That thought, my sweet: 't
were neither fit nor fair!
Seek not for any grafted fruits
From souls so wedded at the roots;

But whatsoe'er our fibres hold,
Let that grow forth in mutual, ample
mold!
No sap can circle without flaw
Into the perfect sphere we saw

Hanging before our happy eyes
Amid the shade of
marriage-mysteries;
But all that in the heart doth lurk
Must toward the mystic shaping
work:
Sweet fruit and bitter both must fall
When the boughs bend,
at each year's autumn-call.
Ah, dear defect! that aye shall lift
Us higher, not through craven shift

Of fault on common frailty;--nay,
But twofold hope to help with
generous stay!
I shall be nearer, understood:
More prized art thou than perfect good.

And since thou lov'st me, I shall grow
Thy other self--thy Life, thy
Joy, thy Woe!
THE FISHER OF THE CAPE.
At morn his bark like a bird
Slips lightly oceanward--
Sail
feathering smooth o'er the bay
And beak that drinks the wild spray.

In his eyes beams cheerily
A light like the sun's on the sea,
As he
watches the waning strand,
Where the foam, like a waving hand
Of
one who mutely would tell
Her love, flutters faintly, "Farewell."
But at night, when the winds arise
And pipe to driving skies,
And
the moon peers, half afraid,
Through the storm-cloud's ragged shade,

He hears her voice in the blast
That sighs about the mast,
He sees

her face in the clouds
As he climbs the whistling shrouds;
And a
power nerves his hand,
Shall bring the bark to land.
SAILOR'S SONG.
The sea goes up; the sky comes down.
Oh, can you spy the ancient
town,--
The granite hills so hard and gray,
That rib the land behind
the bay?
O ye ho, boys! Spread her wings!
Fair winds, boys: send
her home!
O ye ho!
Three years? Is it so