How the light, light love, he has wings to fly

At suspicion of a bond : How my wisdom has bidden your pleasure good-bye, Which will turn up next in a laughing eye,

And why should you look beyond?

ON THE CLIFF.

1.

I LEANED on the turf,
I looked at a rock
Left dry by the surf;
For the turf, to call it grass were to mock:
Dead to the roots, so deep was done
The work of the summer sun.

2.

And the rock lay flat
As an anvil's face:
No iron like that!
Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace:
Sunshine outside, but ice at the core,
Death’s altar by the lone shore.

3.

On the turf, sprang gay
With his films of blue,
No cricket, I 'll say,

But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too, The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight, Real fairy, with wings all right.

On the rock, they scorch
Like a drop of fire
From a brandished torch,
Fell two red fans of a butterfly:
No turf, no rock, in their ugly stead,
See, wonderful blue and red !

5.

Is it not so
With the minds of men ?
The level and low,
The burnt and bare, in themselves; but then
With such a blue and red grace, not theirs,
Love settling unawares !

VI.

UNDER THE CLIFF.

“ STILL ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no?

Which needs the other's office, thou or I? Dost want to be disburthened of a woe,

And can, in truth, my voice untie Its links, and let it go ?

“ Art thou a dumb, wronged thing that would be righted,

Intrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear.
No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited

With falsehood, — love, at last aware
Of scorn, - hopes, early blighted, —

3.
“ We have them; but I know not any tone

So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow:
Dost think men would go mad without a moan,

If they knew any way to borrow
A pathos like thy own?

4.

“ Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs ? The one

So long escaping from lips starved and blue, That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun

Stretches her length; her foot comes through The straw she shivers on;

5. “ You had not thought she was so tall: and spent,

Her shrunk lids open, her lean fingers shut Close, close, their sharp and livid nails indent

The clammy palm ; then all is mute : That way, the spirit went.

“Or wouldst thou rather that I understand

Thy will to help me ? — like the dog I found Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,

Who would not take my food, poor hound, But whined and licked my hand.”

All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride

Of power to see, — in failure and mistake, Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side,

Merely examples for his sake, Helps to his path untried :