I could fix her face with a guard between, For XLI my heart had a touch of the woodland time, Wanting to sleep now over its best. Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, XLII For a chance to make your little much, When nothing you mar but the year can mend : But a last leaf-fear to touch! XLIII Yet should it unfasten itself and fall At some slight wind-best chance of all ! Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place You trembled to forestall! XLIV Worth how well, those dark grey eyes, XLV You might have turned and tried a man, XLVI But you spared me this, like the heart you are, And filled my empty heart at a word. If two lives join, there is oft a scar, They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far. XLVII A moment after, and hands unseen Were hanging the night around us fast ; XLVIII The forests had done it; there they stood; XLIX How the world is made for each of us! L Be hate that fruit or love that fruit, LI I am named and known by that moment's feat; There took my station and degree; So grew my own small life complete, LII And to watch you sink by the fireside now And the spirit-small hand propping it, LIII So, earth has gained by one man the more, And the gain of earth must be heaven's gain too; And the whole is well worth thinking o'er When autumn comes: which I mean to do One day, as I said before. ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND. I My love, this is the bitterest, that thou- As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say- II I have but to be by thee, and thy hand The beating of my heart to reach its place. Never, I know! Thy soul is in thy face. III Oh, I should fade-'t is willed so! Might I save, Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too. It is not to be granted. But the soul Whence the love comes, all ravage leaves that whole; Vainly the flesh fades; soul makes all things new. IV It would not be because my eye grew dim Thou couldst not find the love there, thanks to Him He gave us from his fire of fires, and bade While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark. V So, how thou wouldst be perfect, white and clean Alike, this body given to show it by ! Oh, three-parts through the worst of life's abyss, VI And is it not the bitterer to think That, disengage our hands and thou wilt sink VII Thou let'st the stranger's glove lie where it fell; For thou art grateful as becomes man best: And hadst thou only heard me play one tune, With thee would such things fade as with the rest. VIII I seem to see! We meet and part; 't is brief; The very chair I sat on, breaks the rank <; Three lines, my face comes at so slight a call: IX But now, because the hour through years was fixed, Because thou once hast loved me-wilt thou dare "Chance cannot change my love, nor time impair. X "So, what if in the dusk of life that 's left, 66 I, a tired traveller of my sun bereft, "Look from my path when, mimicking the same, "The fire-fly glimpses past me, come and gone? "Where was it till the sunset? where anon "It will be at the sunrise! What 's to blame?" XI Is it so helpful to thee? Canst thou take The mimic up, nor, for the true thing's sake, Put gently by such efforts at a beam? Is the remainder of the way so long, Thou need'st the little solace, thou the strong? Watch out thy watch, let weak ones doze and dream! |