Songs, Merry and Sad | Page 7

dumb touch of Helen's hand,
And, oh, my heart, my heart!
Alcestis
Not long the living weep above their dead,
And you will grieve,
Admetus, but not long.
The winter's silence in these desolate halls

Will break with April's laughter on your lips;
The bees among the
flowers, the birds that mate,
The widowed year, grown gaunt with
memory
And yearning toward the summer's fruits, will come
With
lotus comfort, feeding all your veins.
The vining brier will crawl
across my grave,
And you will woo another in my stead.
Those
tender, foolish names you called me by,
Your passionate kiss that
clung unsatisfied,
The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed

Life's busy stir, and left us two alone,
Will you remember? or,
when dawn creeps in,
And you bend o'er another's pillowed head,

Seeing sleep's loosened hair about her face,
Until her low

love-laughter welcomes you,
Will you, down-gazing at her waking
eyes,
Forget?
So have I loved you, my Admetus,
I thank the cruel fates who clip
my life
To lengthen yours, they tarry not for age
To dim my eye
and blanch my cheek, but now
Take me, while my lips are sweet to
you
And youth hides yet amid this hair of mine,
Brown in the
shadow, golden in the light.
Bend down and kiss me, dying for your
sake,
Not gratefully, but sadly, love's farewell;
And if the flowering
year's oblivion
Lend a new passion to thy life, far down
In the dim
Stygian shadows wandering,
I will not know, but still will cherish
there,
Where no change comes, thy love upon my lips.
Reminiscence
We sang old love-songs on the way
In sad and merry snatches,

Your fingers o'er the strings astray
Strumming the random catches.
And ever, as the skiff plied on
Among the trailing willows,

Trekking the darker deeps to shun
The gleaming sandy shallows,
It seemed that we had, ages gone,
In some far summer weather,

When this same faery moonlight shone,
Sung these same songs
together.
And every grassy cape we passed,
And every reedy island,
Even the
bank'd cloud in the west
That loomed a sombre highland;
And you, with dewmist on your hair,
Crowned with a wreath of lilies,

Laughing like Lalage the fair
And tender-eyed like Phyllis:
I know not if 't were here at home,
By some old wizard's orders,
Or
long ago in Crete or Rome
Or fair Provencal borders,
But now, as when a faint flame breaks
From out its smouldering

embers,
My heart stirs in its sleep, and wakes,
And yet but
half-remembers
That you and I some other time
Moved through this dream of glory,

Like lovers in an ancient rhyme,
A long-forgotten story.
Sonnet
I would that love were subject unto law!
Upon his person I should lay
distraint
And force him thus to answer my complaint,
Which I, in
well-considered counts, should draw.
Not free to fly, he needs must
seek some flaw
To mar my pleading, though his heart were faint;

Declare his counsel to me, and acquaint
Himself with maxim,
precedent, and saw.
Ah, I could win him with authorities,
If suing thus in such a sober
court;
Could read him many an ancient rhym'd report
Of such sad
cases, tears would fill his eyes
And he confess a judgment, or resort

To some well-pleasing terms of compromise!
Lines
To you, dear mother heart, whose hair is gray
Above this page to-day,

Whose face, though lined with many a smile and care,
Grows year
by year more fair,
Be tenderest tribute set in perfect rhyme,
That haply passing time

May cull and keep it for strange lips to pay
When we have gone our
way;
And, to strange men, weary of field and street,
Should this, my song,
seem sweet,
Yours be the joy, for all that made it so
You know,
dear heart, you know.
An Easter Hymn

The Sun has come again and fed
The lily's lamp with light,
And
raised from dust a rose, rich red,
And a little star-flower, white;
He
also guards the Pleiades
And holds his planets true:
But we -- we
know not which of these
The easier task to do.
But, since from heaven he stoops to breathe
A flower to balmy air,

Surely our lives are not beneath
The kindness of his care;
And, as
he guides the blade that gropes
Up from the barren sod,
So, from
the ashes of our hopes,
Will beauty grow toward God.
Whate'er thy name, O Soul of Life, --
We know but that thou art, --

Thou seest, through all our waste of strife,
One groping human heart,

Weary of words and broken sight,
But moved with deep accord

To worship where thy lilies light
The altar of its Lord.
A Christmas Hymn
Near where the shepherds watched by night
And heard the angels o'er
them,
The wise men saw the starry light
Stand still at last before
them.
No armored castle there to ward
His precious life from
danger,
But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord
Lay in a lowly
manger.
No booming bells proclaimed his birth,
No armies
marshalled by,
No iron thunders shook the earth,
No rockets clomb
the sky;
The temples builded in his name
Were shapeless granite
then,
And all the choirs that sang his fame
Were later breeds of men.

But, while the world about him slept,
Nor cared that he was born,

One gentle face above him kept
Its mother watch till morn;
And,
if