SCYTHE SONG.

Stalwart mowers, brown and lithe,
Over summer meads abloom,
Wielding fast the whispering Scythe,
Where is all the old perfume?
Breathes it yet in tender gloom,

Soft through Hades' twilight air?
Where hath Summer-tide her tomb?
Hush! the Scythe says, where, ah where?

Comes the long blade, gleaming cold,
Where the garden-ground is spread
Rays of pearl on crowns of gold,
Dainty daisies, white and red!

Dames that o'er them once would tread,
Damsels blithe and debonair,

Where is all your sweetness fled?

Hush! the Scythe says, where, ah where?

Time! who tak'st and giv'st again

All things bitter, some things sweet,

Must we follow, all in vain

Follow still those phantom feet?
Is there not some grass-grown street,
Some old, yew-begirt parterre,

Where our Dreams and we may meet?
Hush! the Scythe says, where, ah where?

HIC JACKET.

And is it possible? - and must it be
At last, indifference 'twixt you and me?
We who have loved so well,

Must we indeed fall under that strange spell,
The tyranny of the grave?

In sullen severance patient and resigned,
By each of each forgotten out of mind-
Dear, is there none to save?

Must you whose heart makes answer to mine

own,

Whose voice compels me with its every tone,
Must you forget my fealty to claim,

And I to turn and tremble at your name,
Sunk in dull slumber neath a lichened stone?
Shall not my pulses leap if you be near?
Shall these endure, the sun, the wind, the rain,
And naught of all our tenderness remain,

Our joy our hope our fear?

Sweet, 'tis the one thing certain

rail or weep,

Plead or defy, take counsel as we may,
It shall not profit us: this only, pray
Of the blind powers that keep

Nay,

The harvest of the years we sow and reap,
That naught shall sever nor estrange us
Let us live out our great love's little day
Fair and undimmed, before we fall on sleep.

A SUMMER NIGHT.

'Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne Me rendra fou.'

O murky evening air,
What Paradise,

Unsought, un found, unknown,
Inviteth me,

With faint night-odours blown?
With murmurous plea?

Future art thou, or Past?

Hope, or Regret?

My heart throbs thick and fast,

Mine eyes are wet,

For well and well I know

Thou hast no share,

Nor hence, nor long ago,
Nor anywhere.

RESURGAM.

Though I am old, the world will still be young -
The spring wind breathes on slumbering memories,
The spring birds pipe amid my garden trees,

And dense and green the new year's grass hath sprung: Ay, though my light is dimmed and my heart wrung By pitiless eld's unsparing cruelties.

Ah, for that shore beyond the unsailed seas!
Where burns the Fire of Life with equal flame:
Where never sigheth song nor bringeth breeze
One whisper of the pride of youth's surcease,
The faded years' inevitable shame.

And yet

and yet

most sweet it is to know

That though my meagre days be withering,

Still shall be wrought the miracle of Spring,

That deep May nights shall bloom, and love-lamps glow, Still shall the town's bright rapids swirl and flow,

The meteor troop of passions come and go;

That men shall love, and hate, and laugh, and sing.

I see my imperfection perfected,

My hampered hopes by stronger hearts set free,

My halting plans by others crowned and sped,
Whose feet shall find the paths I might not tread,
Whose clearer eyes the things I loved shall see:-
The sunlight gold-the shadow of the dawn
The autumn evening's amber sorcery,

When o'er my head the veil of death is drawn
And all the waves of Night go over me.

And so I cannot but be comforted

To think how fair my world will always be,
That Youth and Spring revive eternally,
That abler hands shall labor in my stead,
And gay new ventures dare the hazardous sea:

Thus shall I live again though I be dead;
And all my soul is glad unspeakably.

SPRING SONG.

So many ways to wander in,

So many lands to see!

The west wind blows through the orchard-close,

And the white clouds wander free;

The wild birds sing in the heart of Spring,
And the green boughs beckon me.

And it 's O, for the wide world, far away!
'Tis there I fain would be,

It calls me, claims me, the live-long day,
Sweet with the sounds and the scents of May,
And the wind in the linden-tree;

The wild birds sing in the heart of Spring,
And the green boughs beckon me.

'Far, and far, in the distance dim,
Thy fortune waiteth thee!'-

I know not where, but the world is fair
With many a strange countree;

The wild birds sing in the heart of Spring,
And the green boughs beckon me.

So many ways I may never win,
Skies I may never see!

O wood-ways sweet for the vagrant feet,
What may not come to be?

What do they sing in the heart of Spring,
And where do they beckon me?

Farewell, farewell, to my father's house!
Farewell, true-love, to thee!

Dear, and dear, are the kind hearts here,
And dear mine own roof-tree-

But the wild birds sing in the heart of Spring,
And the green boughs beckon me.

FINIS.

Even for you I shall not weep

When I at last, at last am dead,
Nor turn and sorrow in my sleep
Though you should linger overhead.

Even of you I shall not dream

Beneath the waving graveyard grass;
One with the soul of wind and stream
I shall not heed you if you pass.

Even for you I would not wake,
Too bitter were the tears I knew,
Too dark the road I needs must take -
The road that winds away from you.

EPITAPH.

Now lay thee down to sleep, and dream of me; Though thou are dead and I am living yet, Though cool thy couch and sweet thy slumbers be, Dream - do not quite forget.

Sleep all the autumn, all the winter long,
With never a painted shadow from the past
To haunt thee; only, when the blackbird's song
Wakens the woods at last,