Black the driving raincloud breasts the iron gateway:
She is forth to cheer a neighbour lacking mirth.
So when sky and grass met rolling dumb for thunder
Saw I once a white dove, sole light of earth.

Prim little scholars are the flowers of her garden,
Train'd to stand in rows, and asking if they please.
I might love them well but for loving more the wild ones:
O my wild ones! they tell me more than these.
You, my wild one, you tell of honied field-rose,

Violet, blushing eglantine in life; and even as they,
They by the wayside are earnest of your goodness,
You are of life's, on the banks that line the way.

Peering at her chamber the white crowns the red rose,
Jasmine winds the porch with stars two and three.
Parted is the window; she sleeps; the starry jasmine
Breathes a falling breath that carries thoughts of me.
Sweeter unpossess'd, have I said of her my sweetest?
Not while she sleeps: while she sleeps the jasmine breathes,
Luring her to love; she sleeps; the starry jasmine
Bears me to her pillow under white rose-wreaths.

Yellow with birdfoot-trefoil are the grass-glades;
Yellow with cinquefoil of the dew-gray leaf;
Yellow with stonecrop; the moss-mounds are yellow;
Blue-neck'd the wheat sways, yellowing to the sheaf.
Green-yellow, bursts from the copse the laughing yaffle;
Sharp as a sickle is the edge of shade and shine:
Earth in her heart laughs looking at the heavens,
Thinking of the harvest: I look and think of mine.

This I may know: her dressing and undressing

Such a change of light shows as when the skies in sport Shift from cloud to moonlight; or edging over thunder Slips a ray of sun; or sweeping into port White sails furl; or on the ocean borders

White sails lean along the waves leaping green. Visions of her shower before me, but from eyesight Guarded she would be like the sun were she seen.

Front door and back of the moss'd old farmhouse

Open with the morn, and in a breezy link

Freshly sparkles garden to stripe-shadow'd orchard, Green across a rill where on sand the minnows wink. Busy in the grass the early sun of summer

Swarms, and the blackbird's mellow fluting notes Cali my darling up with round and roguish challenge: Quaintest, richest carol of all the singing throats!

Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy

Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school,

Cricketing below, rush'd brown and red with sunshine;
O the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool!
Spying from the farm, herself she fetch'd a pitcher
Full of milk, and tilted for each in turn the beak.
Then a little fellow, mouth up and on tiptoe,

Said, 'I will kiss you': she laugh'd and lean'd her cheek.

Doves of the fir-wood walling high our red roof

Through the long noon coo, crooning through the coo. Loose droop the leaves, and down the sleepy roadway Sometimes pipes a chaffinch; loose droops the blue. Cows flap a slow tail knee-deep in the river,

Breathless, given up to sun and gnat and fly.
Nowhere is she seen; and if I see her nowhere,
Lightning may come, straight rains and tiger sky.

O the golden sheaf, the rustling treasure-armful!
O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

O the treasure-tresses one another over

Nodding! O the girdle slack about the waist!

Slain are the poppies that shot their random scarlet
Quick amid the wheat-ears: wound about the waist,
Gather'd, see these brides of Earth one blush of ripeness!
O the nutbrown tresses nodding interlaced!

Large and smoky red the sun's cold disk drops,
Clipp'd by naked hills, on violet shaded snow:

Eastward large and still lights up a bower of moonrise,
Whence at her leisure steps the moon aglow.

Nightlong on black print-branches our beech-tree
Gazes in this whiteness: nightlong could I.
Here may life on death or death on life be painted.
Let me clasp her soul to know she cannot die!

Gossips count her faults; they scour a narrow chamber
Where there is no window, read not heaven or her.
'When she was a tiny,' one agèd woman quavers,

Plucks at my heart and leads me by the ear.
Faults she had once as she learn'd to run and tumbled:
Faults of feature some see, beauty not complete.
Yet, good gossips, beauty that makes holy

Earth and air, may have faults from head to feet.

Hither she comes; she comes to me; she lingers,
Deepens her brown eyebrows, while in new surprise
High rise the lashes in wonder of a stranger;

Yet am I the light and living of her eyes.

Something friends have told her fills her heart to brimming Nets her in her blushes, and wounds her, and tames.Sure of her haven, O like a dove alighting,

Arms up, she dropp'd: our souls were in our names.

Soon will she lie like a white frost sunrise.

Yellow oats and brown wheat, barley pale as rye, Long since your sheaves have yielded to the thresher, Felt the girdle loosen'd, seen the tresses fly.

Soon will she lie like a blood-red sunset.

Swift with the to-morrow, green-wing'd Spring! Sing from the South-west, bring her back the truants, Nightingale and swallow, song and dipping wing.

Soft new beech-leaves, up to beamy April

Spreading bough on bough a primrose mountain, you Lucid in the moon, raise lilies to the skyfields,

Youngest green transfused in silver shining through:
Fairer than the lily, than the wild white cherry:
Fair as in image my seraph love appears

Borne to me by dreams when dawn is at my eyelids.
Fair as in the flesh she swims to me on tears.

Could I find a place to be alone with heaven,

I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need, Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood,

Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October;

Streaming like the flag-reed South-west blown; Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam: All seem to know what is for heaven alone.

710

ALEXANDER SMITH

ON the Sabbath-day,

[1829-1867]

BARBARA

Through the churchyard old and grey,

Over the crisp and yellow leaves, I held my rustling way; And amid the words of mercy, falling on my soul like balms; 'Mid the gorgeous storms of music-in the mellow organ

calms,

'Mid the upward streaming prayers, and the rich and solemn psalms,

I stood careless, Barbara.

My heart was otherwhere

While the organ shook the air,

And the priest, with outspread hands, blessed the people

with a prayer;

But, when rising to go homeward, with a mild and saint-like

shine

Gleamed a face of airy beauty with its heavenly eyes on

mine

Gleamed and vanished in a moment-O that face was surely

thine

Out of heaven, Barbara!

O pallid, pallid face!

O earnest eyes of grace!

When last I saw thee, dearest, it was in another place.

You came running forth to meet me with my love-gift on

your wrist:

The flutter of a long white dress, then all was lost in mistA purple stain of agony was on the mouth I kissed,

That wild morning, Barbara!

I searched in my despair,

Sunny noon and midnight air;

I could not drive away the thought that you were lingering there.

O many and many a winter night I sat when you were gone, My worn face buried in my hands, beside the fire alone. Within the dripping churchyard, the rain plashing on your stone,

You were sleeping, Barbara.

'Mong angels, do you think

Of the precious golden link

I clasped around your happy arm while sitting by yon brink?

Or when that night of gliding dance, of laughter and

guitars,

Was emptied of its music, and we watched, through latticed

bars,

The silent midnight heaven creeping o'er us with its stars, Till the day broke, Barbara?

In the years I've changed;

Wild and far my heart hath ranged,

And many sins and errors now have been on me avenged; But to you I have been faithful, whatsoever good I lacked: I loved you, and above my life still hangs that love intact

Your love the trembling rainbow, I the reckless cataract. Still I love you, Barbara!

Yet, love, I am unblest;

With many doubts oppressed,

I wander like a desert wind, without a place of rest.
Could I but win you for an hour from off that starry shore,

(N) HC XLII