HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.
LOVE, when all these years are silent, vanished quite and laid to rest,
When you and I are sleeping, folded breathless breast to breast,
When no morrow is before us, and the long grass tosses o'er us,
And our grave remains forgotten, or by alien footsteps pressed,
Still that love of ours will linger, that great love enrich the earth,
Sunshine in the heavenly azure, breezes blowing joyous mirth;
Fragrance fanning off from flowers, melody of summer showers,
Sparkle of the spicy wood-fires round the happy autumn hearth.
That's our love. But you and I, dear, shall we linger with it yet,
Mingled in one dewdrop, tangled in one sunbeam's golden net, -
On the violet's purple bosom, I the sheen but you the blossom,
Stream on sunset winds, and be the haze with which some hill is wet?
Oh, beloved, if ascending, — when we have endowed the world
With the best bloom of our being, whither will our way be whirled;
Through what vast and starry spaces, toward what awful holy places,
With a white light on our faces, spirit over spirit furled?
Only this our yearning answers, whereso'er that way defile,
Not a film shall part us through the æons of that mighty while,
In the fair eternal weather, even as phantoms still together,
Floating, floating, one forever, in the light of God's great smile!
Above that low horizon lean,
And marked within the Merrimack
The self-same sunset reddening back,
Or in the Powow's shining stream,
That silent river of a dream!
Where Craneneck o'er the woody
gloom
Lifts her steep mile of apple-bloom: Where Salisbury Sands, in yellow length
With the great breaker measures strength;
Where Artichoke in shadow slides,
The lily on her painted tides -
There's naught in the enchanted view
That does not seem a part of you;
Your legends hang on every hill,
Your songs have made it dearer still.
Yours is the river-road; and yours
Are all the mighty meadow floors
Where the long Hampton levels lie
Alone between the sea and sky.
Fresher in Follymill shall blow
The Mayflowers, that you loved them
A LITTLE hand, a fair soft hand
Dimpled and sweet to kiss:
No sculptor ever carved from stone
A lovelier hand than this.
Tumult and life are not for me!
Silence and sleep about us creep;
Tumult and life are not for thee!
How late it is since such as this
Had topped the height of breathing
bliss!
And now we keep an iron sleep,-
In that grave thou, and I in this!
A FOUR-O'CLOCK.
Aш, happy day, refuse to go!
Hang in the heavens forever so!
Forever in mid-afternoon,
Ah, happy day of happy June!
Pour out thy sunshine on the hill,
The piny wood with perfume fill,
And breathe across the singing sea
Land-scented breezes, that shall be
Sweet as the gardens that they pass,
Where children tumble in the grass!
Ah, happy day, refuse to go!
Hang in the heavens forever so!
And long not for thy blushing rest
In the soft bosom of the west,
But bid gray evening get her back
With all the stars upon her track!
Forget the dark, forget the dew,
The mystery of the midnight blue,
And only spread thy wide warm
wings
[flings!
While Summer her enchantment
Ah, happy day, refuse to go!
Hang in the heavens forever so!
Forever let thy tender mist
Lie like dissolving amethyst
Deep in the distant dales, and shed
Thy mellow glory overhead!
Yet wilt thou wander, - call the thrush,
And have the wilds and waters hush
To hear his passion-broken tune,
Ah, happy day of happy June!
ONLY a tender little thing,
So velvet soft and white it is; But March himself is not so strong, With all the great gales that are his.
In vain his whistling storms he calls, In vain the cohorts of his power Ride down the sky on mighty blasts
He cannot crush the little flower.
Its white spear parts the sod, the
Than that white spear less snowy are,
The rains roll off its crest like spray, It lifts again its spotless star.
Blow, blow, dark March! To meet you here,
Thrust upward from the central gloom,
The stellar force of the old earth Pulses to life in this slight bloom.
OH, glad am I that I was born!
For who is sad when flaming morn
Bursts forth, or when the mighty
night
Carries the soul from height to height!
To me, as to the child that sings, The bird that claps his rain-washed wings, [flower, The breeze that curls the sun-tipped Comes some new joy with each new hour.
Joy in the beauty of the earth,
Joy in the fire upon the hearth,
Joy in that potency of love
In which I live and breathe and move!
Joy even in the shapeless thought That, some day, when all tasks are wrought,
I shall explore that vasty deep
Beyond the frozen gates of sleep.
For joy attunes all beating things,
With me each rhythmic atom sings,
From glow till gloom, from mirk till
morn;
Oh, glad am I that I was born!
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
WHAT love do I bring you? The earth,
Full of love, were far lighter;
The great hollow sky, full of love,
Something slighter.
Earth full and heaven full were less
Than the full measure given;
Nay, say a heart full, - the heart
Holds earth and heaven!
He reads the stars, and grasps the flame
That quivers round the Throne on high,
In war renowned, in peace sublime, He moves in greatness and in grace;
She led him through the trackless His power, subduing space and time,
Links realm to realm and race to
|