My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!

My hair was over in the grass,

My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run

10 Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

Among those few, out of the sun,

The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be

Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains to me, —

The woodspurge has a cup of three.

Sonnets from “The House of Life”

Sonnet

A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,—

Memorial from the soul’s eternity

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,

Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,

Of its own intricate fulness reverent:

Carve it in ivory or in ebony,

As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see

It’s flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals

The soul, — its converse, to what Power ‘tis due —

Whether for tribute to the august appeals

Of Life, or dower in Love’s high retinue,

It serve; or, ‘mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,

In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death.

I. Love Enthroned

Marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair: —

Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;

And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past

To signal-fires, Oblivion’s flight to scare;

And Youth, with still some single golden hair

Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last

Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;

And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.

Love’s throne was not with these; but far above

All passionate wind of welcome and farewell

He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;

Though Truth foreknow Love’s heart, and Hope foretell,

And Fame be for Love’s sake desirable,

And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to love.

VI. The Kiss

What smouldering senses in death’s sick delay

Or seizure of malign vicissitude

Can rob this body of honour, or denude

This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?

For lo! even now my lady’s lips did play

With these my lips such consonant interlude

As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed

The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

I was a child beneath her touch, — a man

When breast to breast we clung, even I and she, —

A spirit when her spirit looked through me, —

A god when all our life-breath met to fan

Our life-blood, till love’s emulous ardours ran,

Fire within fire, desire in deity.

XIX. Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, —

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup fields with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: —

So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

XXI. Love-Sweetness

Sweet dimness of her loosened hair’s downfall

About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head

In gracious fostering union garlanded;

Her tremulous smiles; her glances’ sweet recall

Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;

Her mouth’s culled sweetness by thy kisses shed

On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led

Back to her mouth which answers there for all —

What sweeter than these things, except the thing

In lacking which all these would lose their sweet —

The confident heart’s still fervour: the swift beat

And soft subsidence of the spirit’s wing,

Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,

The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

XXV. Winged Hours

Each hour until we meet is as a bird

That wings from far his gradual way along

The rustling covert of my soul, — his song

Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr’d:

But at the hour of meeting, a clear word