All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades' Colonnades,

All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, — and then,

All the men!

--

When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand

On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,

Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

VII.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,

And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,

Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force
Gold, of course.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.

A LOVERS' QUARREL.

I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!

How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again

After last night's rain,

And the South dries the hawthorn-spray

Only, my Love's away!

I'd as lief that the blue were gray.

III.

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow, -
When the wind would edge

In and in his wedge,

In, as far as the point could go -
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We would try and trace

One another's face

In the ash, as an artist draws;
Free on each other's flaws,

Try, will our table turn?

Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips

Through the finger-tips

In a fire which a few discern,

And a very few feel burn,

And the rest, they may live and learn!

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,
Nor reproach nor taunt.
See a word, how it severeth!
Oh, power of life and death
In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!

XIV.

Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You,
Since, as truth is true,

I was you all the happy past-
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?

XV.

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!

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-lash

I 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!

XXI.

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!