BURNING OLD LETTERS.

465

of mine,

Where shine you? On what happier fields and flowers?

Heaven's lamps renew their lustre less divine,

But only serve to count my darkened hours.

If with your presence went your image 100,

That brain-born ghost my path would

never cross

Which meets me now where'er I once met you,

Then vanishes, to multiply my loss.

MONNA LISA.

SHE gave me all that woman can,
Nor her soul's nunnery forego,
A confidence that man to man
Without remorse can never show.

Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers!

THE OPTIMIST.

TURBID from London's noise and smoke,
Here I find air and quiet too:
Air filtered through the beech and
oak,

Quiet by nothing harsher broke
Than wood-dove's meditative coo.

The Truce of God is here; the breeze
Sighs as men sigh relieved from care,
Or tilts as lightly in the trees
As might a robin: all is ease,
With pledge of ampler ease to spare.

Time, leaning on his scythe, forgets
To turn the hourglass in his hand,
And all life's petty cares and frets,
Its teasing hopes and weak regrets,
Are still as that oblivious sand.

Repose fills all the generous space
Of undulant plain; the rook and crow
Hush; 't is as if a silent grace,
By Nature murmured, calmed the face
Of Heaven above and Earth below.

One Sabbath pacifies my year;
I am the halcyon, this my nest;
And all is safely for the best
While the World's there and I am
here.

So I turn tory for the nonce,
And think the radical a bore,
Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce,
That what was good for people once
Must be as good forevermore.

Sun, sink no deeper down the sky;
Earth, never change this summer mood;
Breeze, loiter thus forever by,
Stir the dead leaf or let it lie:
Since I am happy, all is good.
MIDDLETON, August, 1884.

ON BURNING SOME OLD LETTERS.

WITH what odorous woods and spices
Spared for royal sacrifices,
With what costly gums seld-seen,
Hoarded to embalm a queen,
With what frankincense and myrrh,
Burn these precious parts of her,
Full of life and light and sweetness
As a summer day's completeness,
Joy of sun and song of bird
Running wild in every word,
Full of all the superhuman
Grace and winsomeness of woman?

O'er these leaves her wrist has slid,
Thrilled with veins where fire is hid
'Neath the skin's pellucid veil,
Like the opal's passion pale;
This her breath hath sweetened; this
Still seems trembling with the kiss
She half-ventured on my name,
Brow and cheek and throat aflame;
Over all caressing lies

Sunshine left there by her eyes;
From them all an effluence rare
With her nearness fills the air,
Till the murmur I half-hear
Of her light feet drawing near.

Rarest woods were coarse and rough,
Sweetest spice not sweet enough,
Too impure all earthly fire
For this sacred funeral-pyre;
These rich relics must suffice
For their own dear sacrifice.

It shall be this slab, brought home
In old happy days from Rome,
Lazuli, once blest to line
Dian's inmost cell and shrine.
Gently now I lay them there,
Pure as Dian's forehead bare,
Yet suffused with warmer hue,
Such as only Latmos knew.

Fire I gather from the sun
In a virgin lens: 't is done!
Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue,
As her moods were shining through,
Of the moment's impulse born,
Moods of sweetness, playful scorn,
Half defiance, half surrender,
More than cruel, more than tender,
Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade,
Gracious doublings of a maid
Infinite in guileless art,
Playing hide-seek with her heart.

On the altar now, alas,
There they lie a crinkling mass,
Writhing still, as if with grief
Went the life from every leaf;
Then (heart-breaking palimpsest!)
Vanishing ere wholly guessed,
Suddenly some lines flash back,
Traced in lightning on the black,
And confess, till now denied,
All the fire they strove to hide.
What they told me, sacred trust,
Stays to glorify my dust,

There to burn through dust and damp
Like a mage's deathless lamp,
While an atom of this frame
Lasts to feed the dainty flame.

All is ashes now, but they

In my soul are laid away,

And their radiance round me hovers
Soft as moonlight over lovers,
Shutting her and me alone
In dream-Edens of our own;
First of lovers to invent

Love, and teach men what it meant.

THE PROTEST.

I COULD not bear to see those eyes
On all with wasteful largess shine,
And that delight of welcome rise
Like sunshine strained through amber
wine,

But that a glow from deeper skies, From conscious fountains more divine, Is (is it?) mine.

MY PORTRAIT GALLERY.

OFT round my hall of portraiture I gaze, By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy,

From stainless quarries of deep-buried days.

There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, Your faces glow in more than mortal youth,

Companions of my prime, now. vanished wholly,

The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden,

Now for the first time seen in flawless truth.

Ah, never master that drew mortal breath Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death,

Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden!

Thou pain est that which struggled here below

Half unders ood, or understood for woe, And with a sweet forewarning

Mak'st round the sacred front an aureole glow

Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning.

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA.

I WAS with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss,

Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell,

Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fell

The dagger's flash, and did not fall amiss, For nothing now can rob my life of this,

That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well.

Us, undivided when man's vengeance

came,

God's half-forgives that doth not here divide;

And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame,

To me 't were summer, we being side by side:

This granted, I God's mercy will not blame,

For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.

Yet

here to claim remembrance were, methinks,