VII.

Try, will our table turn ?
Lay your hands there light, and yearn

Till the yearning slips

Thro' the finger-tips
In a fire which a few discern,

And a very few feel burn,
And the rest, they may live and learn !

See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest !

'T is a huge fur cloak

Like a reindeer's roke
Falls the lappet along the breast :

Sleeves for her arts to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,

Or I tint your lip
With a burnt stick's tip

And you turn into such a man !

Just the two spots that span Half the bill of the young male swan.

XI. Dearest, three months ago When the mesmerizer Snow

With his hand's first sweep

Put the earth to sleep 'Twas a time when the heart could show

All-how was earth to know, 'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro ?

XII. Dearest, three months ago When we loved each other so,

Lived and loved the same

Till an evening came
When a shaft from the devil's bow

Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and foe!

XIII. Not from the heart beneath'T was a bubble born of breath,

Neither sneer nor vaunt, i Nor reproach nor taunt. See a word, how it severeth !

Oh, power of life and death In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!

Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,

How I look to you

For the pure and true,
And the beauteous and the right,-

Bear with a moment's spite When a mere mote threats the white !

XVI.

What of a hasty word ?
Is the fleshly heart not stirred

By a worm's pin-prick

Where its roots are quick ? See the eye, by a fly’s-foot blurred

Far, when a straw is heard Scratch the brain's coat of curd !

XVII.

Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care ?

'T is the world the same
For my praise or blame,

And endurance is easy there.

Wrong in the one thing rareOh, it is hard to bear!

XVIII.
Here 's the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows;

We shall have the word

In a minor third There is none but the cuckoo knows :

Heaps of the guelder-rose ! I must bear with it, I suppose.

XIX.
Could but November come,
Were the noisy birds struck dumb

At the warning slash

Of his driver's-lashI would laugh like the valiant Thumb

Facing the castle glum And the giant's fee-faw-fum !

XX.
Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped

We can stand apart,.

Heart dispense with heart In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,

Oh, the world's hangings ripped, We were both in a bare-walled crypt !

Each in the crypt would cry
“ But one freezes here! and why?

“When a heart, as chill,

“At my own would thrill “ Back to life, and its fires out-fly?

“ Heart, shall we live or die ? “The rest ... settle by and by !”

XXII.

So, she 'd efface the score,
And forgive me as before.

It is twelve o'clock :

I shall hear her knock
In the worst of a storm's uproar :

I shall pull her through the door, I shall have her for evermore !