As though to hoard it for the haunt-Its fluted wreath, beaded beneath with drops richest brown; the wild-rose spreads its breast Of delicate pink, and the o'erhanging fir Has dropped its dark, long cone. SIR JOHN SUCKLING. CONSTANCY. OUT upon it! I have loved Time shall moult away his wings, In the whole wide world again, But the spite on't is, no praise Love with me had made no stays, Had it any been but she And that very face, There had been at least, ere this, A dozen in her place! WHY SO PALE AND WAN, FOND Why should two hearts in one breast lie, And yet not lodge together? O love! where is thy sympathy, If thus our breasts thou sever? But love is such a mystery, For when I think I'm best resolved, Then farewell, care, and farewell, woe, I will no longer pine; For I'll believe I have her heart As much as she has mine. EARL OF SURREY (HENRY HOWARD). THE MEANS TO ATTAIN HAPPY IN PRAISE OF HIS MARTIAL, the things that do attain mind: LADY-LOVE COMPARED WITH ALL OTHERS. GIVE place, ye lovers, here before That spent your boasts and brags in vain; My lady's beauty passeth more The best of yours, I dare well ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. IN MEMORY OF BARRY CORNWALL. IN the garden of death, where the singers whose names are deathless, One with another make music unheard of men, Where the dead sweet roses fade not of lips long breathless, And the fair eyes shine that shall weep not or change again, Who comes now crowned with the blossom of snow-white years? What music is this that the world of the dead men hears? Beloved of men, whose words on our lips were honey, Whose name in our ears and our fathers' ears was sweet, To the beautiful veiled bright world where the glad ghosts meet, Blest for the years' sweet sake that were filled and brightened, That shrink not by day for heat or for cold by night, As a thought in the heart shall increase when the heart's self knows not, The same year calls, and one goes hence with another, Takes through dim air her unawakened way, Dips her light feet in warm and moving brooks, The fearful firstlings of the plumeless boughs. I seek thee sleeping, and awhile I see, Fair face that art not, how thy maiden breath When heaven shall hear the word that April saith, Tears joyfuller than mirth; As even to May's clear height the young days climb Whose flowers revive not with thy flowers on earth. I would not bid thee, though I might, give back That is not, nor on time's retrodden track No fruit, no flower thought once too fair for death, The morning song beneath the stars that fled The sweet swift eyes and songs of hours that were: But flowers thou may'st, and winds, and hours of ease, A FORSAKEN GARDEN. IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses The steep square slope of the blossomless bed Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses Now lie dead. The fields fall southward, abrupt and broken, To the low last edge of the long lone sand. If a step should sound or a word be spoken, Would a ghost not rise of the strange guest's hand? The dense hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. Not a flower to be prest of the foot that falls not; As the heart of a dead man the seed-plots are dry; From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not, Could she call, there were never a rose to reply. Over the meadows that blossom and wither Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song; Only the sun and the rain come hither, The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath. Only the wind here hovers and revels In a round where life seems barren as death. Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping, Haply, of lovers none ever will know, Whose eyes went seaward, a hundred sleeping Years ago. Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither," And the same wind sang and the same waves whitened, In the lips that had whispered, the eyes that had lightened, Or they loved their life through, and then went whither? Love deep as the sea, as a rose must wither, As the rose-red sea-weed that mocks the rose. |