LITTLE GOLDILOCKS.

GOLDILOCKS sat on the grass,

Tying up of posies rare,

Hardly could a sunbeam pass

Through the cloud that was her hair. Purple orchis lasteth long,

Primrose flowers are pale and clear; O the maiden sang a song

It would do you good to hear!

Sad before her leaned the boy, "Goldilocks that I love well, Happy creature fair and coy,

Think o' me, sweet Amabel." Goldilocks she shook apart,

Looked with doubtful, doubtful eyes,

Like a blossom in her heart

Opened out her first surprise.

As a gloriole sign o' grace,
Goldilocks, ah fall and flow,
On the blooming, childlike face,
Dimple, dimple, come and go.
Give her time; on grass and sky
Let her gaze if she be fain,
As they looked ere he drew nigh,
They will never look again.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

Ah! the playtime she has known,
While her goldilocks grew long,
Is it like a nestling flown,

Childhood over like a song?
Yes, the boy may clear his brow,
Though she thinks to say him nay,
When she sighs, “I cannot now,
Come again some other day."

85

THE NIGHTINGALE HEARD BY THE UNSATISFIED HEART.

WHEN in a May-day hush

Chanteth the Missel-thrush

The harp o' the heart makes answer with murmurous stirs ;

When Robin-redbreast sings,

We think on budding springs,

And Culvers when they coo are love's remembrancers.

But thou in the trance of light
Stayest the feeding night,

And Echo makes sweet her lips with the utterance wise,
And casts at our glad feet,

In a wisp of fancies fleet,

Life's fair, life's unfulfilled, impassioned prophecies.

Her central thought full well

Thou hast the wit to tell,

To take the sense o' the dark and to yield it so;

The moral of moonlight

To set in a cadence bright,

And sing our loftiest dream that we thought none did know.

I have no nest as thou,

Bird on the blossoming bough,

Yet over thy tongue outfloweth the song o' my soul, Chanting, "Forego thy strife,

The spirit out-acts the life,

But much is seldom theirs who can perceive the whole."

SEA-MEWS IN WINTER TIME.

I

WALKED beside a dark gray sea,

And said, "O world, how cold thou art!

Thou poor white world, I pity thee,

For joy and warmth from thee depart.

"The sea is cold, and dark its rim,
Winter sits cowering on the wold,

And I beside this watery brim,
Am also lonely, also cold."

I spoke, and drew toward a rock,

Where many mews made twittering sweet; Their wings upreared, the clustering flock Did pat the sea-grass with their feet.

THE DAWN OF LOVE.

Joy companied with every cry,

Joy in their food, in that keen wind,
That heaving sea, that shaded sky,

And in themselves, and in their kind.

Then all at once a flight, and fast
The lovely crowd flew out to sea;

If mine own life had been recast,

Earth had not looked more changed to me.

"Where is the cold?

The cold is not in crag, nor scar,
Not in the snows that lap the lea.
Not in yon wings that beat afar,
Delighting, on the crested sea.

No, nor in yon exultant wind

That shakes the oak and bends the pine.
Look near, look in, and thou shalt find
No sense of cold, fond fool, but thine!"

87

THE DAWN OF LOVE.

WHEN she came

Before him first, he looked at her and thought
On certain things, and wished they were undone,
Because her girlish innocence, the grace

Of her unblemished pureness, wrought in him
A longing and aspiring, and a shame

To think how wicked was the world- that world

Which he must walk in, while from her (and such

As she was) it was hidden; there was made

A clean path, and the girl moved on like one
In some enchanted ring.

But yet the fortunate, the young

Loved, and much cared-for, entered on his strife, – A stirring of the heart, a quickening keen

Of sight and hearing to the delicate

Beauty and music of an altered world;

Began to walk in that mysterious light

Which doth reveal and yet transform: which gives Destiny, sorrow, youth, and death, and life,

Intenser meaning; in disquieting

Lifts up; a shining light: men call it Love.

The spring came on:

Looking to wed in April all her thoughts

Grew loving: she would fain the world had waxed
More happy with her happiness, and oft

Walking among the flowery woods she felt
Their loveliness reach down into her heart,
And knew with them the ecstasies of growth,
The rapture that was satisfied with light,
The pleasure of the leaf in exquisite

Expansion, through the lovely longed-for spring.

She knew

That in the stronghold of his heart, held back,
Hidden reserves of measureless content

Kept down with happy thought, for her sake mute.