it shows a barren place
In our lot.
A DAUGHTER OF EVE.
A fool I was to sleep at noon,
And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
A fool to snap my lily.
My garden-plot I have not kept;
Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
It's winter now I waken.
Talk what you please of future spring
And sun-warmed sweet to-morrow:--
Stripped bare of hope and every thing,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
I sit alone with sorrow.
VENUS' LOOKING-GLASS.
I marked where lovely Venus and her court
With song and dance and merry laugh went by;
Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly,
Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport.
Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort,
Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye,
Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling high
Or low, and cooed after their tender sort.
All this I saw in spring. Through summer heat
I saw the lovely Queen of Love no more.
But when flushed autumn through the woodlands went
I spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat:
Whom seeing, every harvester gave o'er
His toil, and laughed and hoped and was content.
LOVE LIES BLEEDING.
Love that is dead and buried, yesterday
Out of his grave rose up before my face,
No recognition in his look, no trace
Of memory in his eyes dust-dimmed and grey.
While I, remembering, found no word to say,
But felt my quickened heart leap in its place;
Caught afterglow thrown back from long set days,
Caught echoes of all music passed away.
Was this indeed to meet?--I mind me yet
In youth we met when hope and love were quick,
We parted with hope dead, but love alive:
I mind me how we parted then heart sick,
Remembering, loving, hopeless, weak to strive:--
Was this to meet? Not so, we have not met.
BIRD RAPTURES.
The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, every thing
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.
Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To heark
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