Sonnets and Canzonets

Still on my cheek fresh youth did lively glow,
And at his threatening arrow gaily laught;
Came then my friendly scholar, and we quaffed
From learning’s spring, its sparkling overflow;
All through the lingering evening’s charmèd hours,
Delightful fellowship in thought was ours:
If I from Poesy could not all abstain,
He my poor verses oft did quite undress,
New wrapt in words my thought’s veiled nakedness,
Or kindly clipt my steed’s luxuriant mane:
’Twas my delight his searching eye to meet,
In days of genial versing, memories sweet.

January 1, 1882.

“O Spring, thou youthful beauty of the year,
Mother of flowers, bringer of warbling quires,
Of all sweet new green things, and new desires.”

    Guarini’s Pastor Fido.

I

Auspicious morn, com’st opportune, unbought?
Bring’st thou glad furtherance in thy rosy train?
Speed then, my chariot, following fast my thought,
And distance on thy track the lumbering wain,
O’er plain and hillock nearing her abode,
The goal of expectation, fortune’s road, —
The maiden waits to greet with courtesy
Her bashful guest, while stranger yet is he:
From friendly circle at the city’s Court
She’s come to cull the flowers, to toy and play
With prattling childhood, love’s delightful sport;
Its smile call forth, to scent the new-mown hay,
Enjoy the wholesome laughter, simple mien,
Of country people in this rural scene.

“So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.”

    Shenstone.

II

Ah! why so brief the visit, short his stay?
The acquaintance so surprising, and so sweet,
Stolen is my heart, ’tis journeying far away,
With that shy stranger whom my voice did greet.
That hour so fertile of entrancing thought,
So rapt the conversation, and so free, —
My heart lost soundings, tenderly upcaught,
Driven by soft sails of love and ecstasy!
Was I then? was I? clasped in Love’s embrace,
And touched with ardors of divinity?
Spake with my chosen lover face to face,
Espoused then truly? such my destiny?
I cannot tell; but own the pleasing theft,
That when the stranger went, I was of Love bereft.

“Though the bias of her nature was not to thought but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments; believing, as she did, that, by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble.”

III

Not all the brilliant beauties I have seen,
Mid the gay splendors of some Southern hall,
In jewelled grandeur, or in plainest mien,
Did so my fancy and my heart enthral,
As doth this noble woman, Nature’s queen!
Such hearty greeting from her lips did fall,
And I ennobled was through her esteem;
At once made sharer of her confidence,
As by enchantment of some rapturous dream;
With subtler vision gifted, finer sense,
She loosed my tongue’s refraining diffidence,
And softer accents lent our varying theme:
So much my Lady others doth surpass,
I read them all through her transparent glass.

“They love indeed who quake to say they love.”

    Sir Philip Sidney.

IV

The April rains are past, the frosts austere, —
The flowers are hungering for the genial sun,
The snow’s dissolved, the merry birds are here,
And rural labors now are well begun.
Hither, from the disturbing, noisy Court
I’ve flown to this sequestered, quiet scene,
To meditate on Love and Love’s disport
Mid these smooth pastures and the meadows green.
Sure ’twere no fault of mine, no whispering sin,
If these coy leaves he sends me seem to speak
All that my heart, caressing, folds within;
Nor if I sought to smother, my flushed cheek
Would tell too plainly what I cannot hide,
Fond fancy disenchant nor set aside.