The Rainbow and the Rose | Page 5

soon I shall not meet,
A fading dream of veil and star.
Yet, even as my lips proclaim
The wisdom that the years have lent,

Your absence is joy's banishment,
And life's one music is your name.
I love you to my heart's hid core:
Those other loves? how should one
learn
From marshlights how the great fires burn?
Ah, no! I never
loved before!
SONG.
THE sunshine of your presence lies
On the glad garden of my heart

And bids the leaves of silence part
To show the flowers to your dear
eyes,
And flower on flower blooms there and dies
And still new
buds awakened spring,
For sunshine makes the garden wise,
To
know the time for blossoming.
Night is no time for blossoming,
Your garden then dreams otherwise,

Of vanished Summer, vanished Spring,
And how the dearest
flower first dies.
Yet from your ministering eyes
Though night hath
drawn me far apart
On the still garden of my heart
The moonlight
of your memory lies.
TO VERA, WHO ASKED A SONG.
IF I only had time!
I could make you a rhyme.
But my time is kept
flying
By smiling and sighing
And living and dying for you.
The
song-seed, I sow it,
I water and hoe it,
But never can grow it.
Ah,
traitress, you know it!
What is a poor poet to do?

Ah, let me take breath!
I am harried to death
By the loves and the
graces
That crowd where your face is
That lurk in your laces and
throng.
Call them off for a minute,
Once let me begin it
The devil
is in it
If I can not spin it
As sweet as a linnet, your song!
THE POET TO HIS LOVE.
ALL the flight of thoughts here, shy, bold, scared, intrusive, Fluttering
in the sun, between the green and blue,
Wheeling, whirling, poising,
lovely and elusive,
How to cage the flying thoughts, my winged
delight, for you?
Set a springe of rhyme, and hope to catch them in it?
Strew my love
as grain to lure them to the snare?
Watch the hours built up, slow
minute piled on minute?
Still the wide sky guards their flight, and
still the cage is bare.
Gleam of hovering feathers, brushing me to flout me!
Wings, be
weary! Rest! Who loves you more than I?
Caught? Oh fluttering
pinions whitening air about me!
Rustling wings, and distant flight,
and empty cage and sky!
THE MAIDEN'S PRAYER.
SPRING, pretty Spring, what treasure do you bring to me?
Green
grass and buttercups, cherry-bloom and may?
Sunshine to be glad
with me, and little birds to sing to me? Warm nests to call me along the
woodland way?
Spring, happy Spring, what wonder will you do for me?
Light the
tulip lanterns, and set the furze a-fire?
Fill your sky with sails of
cloud on waves of living blue for me? Show me green cornfields and
budding of the briar?
Spring, darling Spring, my days will not return to me,
You who see
them fleeting, you, all time above,
You who move the whole world's

heart, ah move one heart to turn to me, --Bring me a lover, and teach
me how to love!
SONG.
"LOVE me little, love me long,"
Is the burden of my song,
And if
nothing more may be
Little shall suffice for me.
But if you could crown with flowers
All my radiant, festal hours,

And console for hours of sorrow
Love me more with each to-morrow.
And if you would turn my days
To one splendid hymn of praise,

And set hopes like stars above me
Love me much, and always love
me!
THE MAGIC FLOWER.
THROUGH many days and many days
The seed of love lay hidden
close;
We walked the dusty tiresome ways
Where never a leaf or
blossom grows.
And in the darkness, all the while,
The little seed
its heart uncurled,
And we by many a weary mile
Travelled towards
it, round the world.
To the hid centre of the maze
At last we came, and there we found--

O happy day, O day of days!
--Twin seed-leaves breaking holy
ground.
We dropped life's joys, a garnered sheaf,
And spell-bound
watched, still hour by hour,
Magic on magic, leaf by leaf,
The
unfolding of our love's white flower.
LA DERNIERE ROBE DE SOI.
OH, silken gown, all pink and pretty,
Bought, quite a bargain, in the
City,
Your ill-trained soul full false has played me--
No Paris gown
would have betrayed me.
You knew, my pretty silken treasure,
I must not wed for love or

pleasure,
But for a settlement and title;
Yet you encouraged his
recital!
He said--oh, faithless gown, you listened
While on your sheen two
tear drops glistened--
He said . . . let love to music set it,
I'll never
speak it--nor forget it!
"No, no!" I cried, I tried to save you--
False gown, you showed the
tears I gave you!
You looked discreet when first I found you.
How
could you let his arm go round you?
You darling dress--I'll smooth your creases,
I'll wear you till you drop
to pieces;
But poor men's wives wear cotton only--
Dear gown--I
hope you won't feel lonely!
THE LEAST POSSIBLE.
DEAR goddess of the shining shrine
Where all my votive tapers burn,

Where every gold-embroidered thought
And all my