To listen to thee in thy leafery, Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summer wind. THE DANCERS I DANCE and dance! Another faun, I toss my head, and so does he ; LETTICE LITTLE Lettice is dead, they say, The brown, sweet child who rolled in the hay; Ah, where shall we find her? For the neighbors pass To the pretty lass, In a linen cere-cloth to wind her. If her sister were set to search The nettle-green nook beside the church, She would fly too frightened to own her. Should she come at a noonday call, To her mother 't were worse That her own little wench should pat her. Little Lettice is dead and gone! She fretted to know How its bright drops grow On the hills, but no hand would guide her. Little Lettice is dead and lost! Her willow-tree boughs by storm are tost — Mathilde Blind FROM "A LOVE-TRILOGY" I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove, That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love. I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn, That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn. I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest, That ye sing in his ears of the joy that forever has fled from my breast. I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair, That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair. O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee, A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be. Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire, Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire. I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low, That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe. I go like one in a dream; unbidden my feet know the way To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May. The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core, The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more. The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep, My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep. The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf, But love once gone, goes forever, and all that endures is the grief. THE DEAD THE dead abide with us! Though stark and cold Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still: They have forged our chains of being for good or ill; And their invisible hands these hands yet hold. Our perishable bodies are the mould Vibrations infinite of life in death, As a star's travelling light survives its star! So may we hold our lives, that when we are The fate of those who then will draw this breath, They shall not drag us to their judgmentbar, And curse the heritage which we bequeath. FROM "LOVE IN EXILE" I WHY will you haunt me unawares, My yearning eyes were fain to look Their love, alas! you could not brook, You wrung it till I throbbed and shook, · And wet face channelled like a brook |