Poems

The young man loitered slowly
By the house three times that day;
She took her bird from the window:
“He need not look this way.”
She sat at her piano long,
And sighed, and played a death-sad song.

But when the day was done, she said,
“I wish that he would come!
Remember, Mary, if he calls
To-night–I’m not at home.”
So when he rang, she went–the elf!–
She went and let him in herself.

III

They sang full long together
Their songs love-sweet, death-sad;
The robin woke from his slumber,
And rang out, clear and glad.
“Now go!” she coldly said; “’tis late;”
And followed him–to latch the gate.

He took the rosebud from her hair,
While, “You shall not!” she said;
He closed her hand within his own,
And, while her tongue forbade,
Her will was darkened in the eclipse
Of blinding love upon his lips.

SWEET CLOVER

“… My letters back to me.”

I

I know they won the faint perfume,
That to their faded pages clings,
From gloves, and handkerchiefs, and things
Kept in the soft and scented gloom

Of some mysterious box–poor leaves
Of summer, now as sere and dead
As any leaves of summer shed
From crimson boughs when autumn grieves!

The ghost of fragrance! Yet I thrill
All through with such delicious pain
Of soul and sense, to breathe again
The sweet that haunted memory still.

And under these December skies,
As bland as May’s in other climes,
I move, and muse my idle rhymes
And subtly sentimentalize.

I hear the music that was played,–
The songs that silence knows by heart!–
I see sweet burlesque feigning art,
The careless grace that curved and swayed

Through dances and through breezy walks;
I feel once more the eyes that smiled,
And that dear presence that beguiled
The pauses of the foolish talks,

When this poor phantom of perfume
Was the Sweet Clover’s living soul,
And breathed from her as if it stole,
Ah, heaven! from her heart in bloom!

II

We have not many ways with pain:
We weep weak tears, or else we laugh;
I doubt, not less the cup we quaff,
And tears and scorn alike are vain.

But let me live my quiet life;
I will not vex my calm with grief,
I only know the pang was brief,
And there an end of hope and strife.

And thou? I put the letters by:
In years the sweetness shall not pass;
More than the perfect blossom was
I count its lingering memory.

Alas! with Time dear Love is dead,
And not with Fate. And who can guess
How weary of our happiness
We might have been if we were wed?

    Venice.

THE ROYAL PORTRAITS.

(AT LUDWIGSHOF.)