The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems | Page 7

not here,--we look in vain--
Oh Rose arise, appear!--

Resume thine emerald throne, and reign
The queen of all the year!
THE PLOUGHBOY.
I wonder what he is thinking
In the ploughing field all day.
He
watches the heads of his oxen,
And never looks this way.
And the furrows grow longer and longer,
Around the base of the hill,

And the valley is bright with the sunset,
Yet he ploughs and
whistles still.
I am tired of counting the ridges,
Where the oxen come and go,
And
of thinking of all the blossoms
That are trampled down below.
I wonder if ever he guesses
That under the ragged brim
Of his torn
straw hat I am peeping
To steal a look at him.
The spire of the church and the windows
Are all ablaze in the sun.

He has left the plough in the furrow,
His summer day's work is done.
And I hear him carolling softly
A sweet and simple lay,
That we
often have sung together,
While he turns the oxen away.

The buttercups in the pasture
Twinkle and gleam like stars.
He has
gathered a golden handful,
A leaning over the bars.
He has shaken the curls from his forehead,
And is looking up this
way,--
O where is my sun-bonnet, mother?
He was thinking of me
all day,--
And I'm going down to the meadow,
For I know he is waiting there,

To wreathe the sunshiny blossoms
In the curls of my yellow hair.
THE VOICE OF MANY WATERS.
Oh Sea, that with infinite sadness, and infinite yearning
Liftest thy
crystal forehead toward the unpitying stars,--
Evermore ebbing and
flowing, and evermore returning
Over thy fathomless depths, and
treacherous island bars:--
Oh thou complaining sea, that fillest the wide void spaces
Of the blue
nebulous air with thy perpetual moan,
Day and night, day and night,
out of thy desolate places--
Tell me thy terrible secret, oh Sea! what
hast thou done.
Sometimes in the merry mornings, with the sunshine's golden wonder
Glancing along thy cheek, unwrinkled of any wind,
Thou seemest to
be at peace, stifling thy great heart under A face of absolute calm,--with
danger and death behind!
But I hear thy voice at midnight, smiting the awful silence With the
long suspiration of thy pain suppressed;
And all the blue lagoons, and
all the listening islands
Shuddering have heard, and locked thy secret
in their breast!
Oh Sea! thou art like my heart, full of infinite sadness and pity,-- Of
endless doubt and endeavour, of sorrowful question and strife, Like
some unlighted fortress within a beleagured city,
Holding within and
hiding the mystery of life.

THE DEATH OF AUTUMN.
Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded
hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
Grey Autumn meets her fate.
Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like
banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
Making perpetual moan.
Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the
frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
Searching for her lost loves.
From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture
lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
Along the amber slope,--
And valleys drowsed between,
In the rich purple of the vintage time,

When cups of gold that drop with fragrant wine,
From orchard branches lean;--
And far beyond them, spread
Broad fields thick set with sheaves of
yellow wheat,
Where scarlet poppies, slumberously sweet,
Glow with a dusky red--
To the remotest zone
Of hazy woodland pencilled on the sky,
On
whose far spires the clouds of sunset lie,--
She held her regal throne!

Queen of a princely race,
Whose ministers were all the elements;

Sunshine, and rain, and dew she did dispense
With a right royal grace.
Now, not a breath of air,
Nor sunbeam, nor the voice of beast or bird,

Stirring the lonely woods, hath any word
To comfort her despair.
Insidious, day by day
A smouldering flame, a lurid crimson creeps

Into the ashy whiteness of her cheeks,
And burns her life away.
The cavernous woods are dumb!
Through their oracular depths and
secret nooks,
To the mute supplication of her looks
No mystic voices come
And through the still grey air
The night comes down, and hangs her
lamp on high,
Like a wan lily blossomed on the sky,
Shining so ghostly fair,
Or looming up the heights,
Those awful spectres of the frozen zone

Splinter the crystal of heaven's sapphire dome,
With arrowy-glancing lights.
The while hoarse night winds rave,
The old year looking backward to
his prime
With dim fond eyes, down the last steps of time
Goes maundering to his grave!
A FAREWELL

Down the steep west unrolled,
I watch the river of the sunset flow,

With all its crimson lights, and gleaming gold,
Into the dusk below.
And even as I gaze,
The soft lights fade,-the pageant gay is o'er,

And all is grey and dark, like those lost days,
The days that are no
more.
No more through whispering pines,
I shall behold, in the else silent
even,
The first faint star-watch set along the lines
Of the white tents
of heaven.
Before the earliest buds
Have softly opened, heralding the May

With tender