Be happy that no worse befell! "
What small fear, if another says,

"Three days and one short night beside
May throw no shadow on your ways;
But years must teem with change untried,
With chance not easily defied,

With an end somewhere undescried."

No fear! or if a fear be born

This minute, it dies out in scorn.
Fear? I shall see her in three days
And one night, now the nights are short,
Then just two hours, and that is morn.

Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages.
Then follow women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved to-day,

Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties yet unborn. And all, to one cadence,
They circle their rose on my rose tree.

III.

Dear rose, thy term is reached,

Thy leaf hangs loose and bleached :
Bees pass it unimpeached.

IV.

Stay then, stoop, since I cannot climb,
You, great shapes of the antique time!
How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,
Break my heart at your feet to please you?
Oh, to possess and be possessed!
Hearts that beat 'neath each pallid breast!
Once but of love, the poesy, the passion,
Drink but once and die!

In vain, the same fashion,

They circle their rose on my rose tree.

V.

Dear rose, thy joy's undimmed,
Thy cup is ruby-rimmed,

Thy cup's heart nectar-brimmed.

VI.

Deep, as drops from a statue's plinth
The bee sucked in by the hyacinth,
So will I bury me while burning,

Quench like him at a plunge my yearning,
Eyes in your eyes, lips on your lips!

Fold me fast where the cincture slips,

Prison all my soul in eternities of pleasure,

Girdle me for once! But no― the old measure,

They circle their rose on my rose tree.

VII.

Dear rose without a thorn,

Thy bud's the babe unborn:

First streak of a new morn.

VIII.

Wings, lend wings for the cold, the clear!

What is far conquers what is near.

Roses will bloom nor want beholders,

Sprung from the dust where our flesh moulders.
What shall arrive with the cycle's change?
A novel grace and a beauty strange.

I will make an Eve, be the artist that began her,

Shaped her to his mind! — Alas! in like manner
They circle their rose on my rose tree.

BEFORE.

I.

Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far. God must judge the couple: leave them as they are Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory,

And whichever one the guilt 's with, to my story!

II.

Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough,
Strike no arm out further, stick and stink as now,
Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,
Heaven with snaky hell, in torture and entoilment?

ΙΙΙ.

Who's the culprit of them? How must he conceive
God-the queen he caps to, laughing in his sleeve,
"'Tis but decent to profess oneself beneath her :
Still, one must not be too much in earnest, either!"

IV.

Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes ;
Then go live his life out! Life will try his nerves,
When the sky, which noticed all, makes no disclosure,
And the earth keeps up her terrible composure.

V.

Let him pace at pleasure, past the walls of rose,
Pluck their fruits when grape-trees graze him as he goes!
For he 'gins to guess the purpose of the garden,
With the sly mute thing, beside there, for a warden.

VI.

What's the leopard-dog-thing, constant at his side,
A leer and lie in every eye of its obsequious hide?
When will come an end to all the mock obeisance,
And the price appear that pays for the misfeasance?

So much for the culprit. Who's the martyred man?
Let him bear one stroke more, for be sure he can!
He that strove thus evil's lump with good to leaven,
Let him give his blood at last and get his heaven!