Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze
That wantoned o'er the solitude
The water's melody pursued,
And sleepy hummings of the bees.

II.

And ankle-deep in violet blooms
Methought I saw you standing there,
A lawny light among the glooms,
A crown of sunlight on your hair;
Wild songsters singing every where
Made lightning with their glossy plumes;
About you clung the wild perfumes
And swooned along the shining air.

III.

And then you called me, and my ears
Grew flattered with the music, led
In fancy back to sweeter years,
Far sweeter years that now are dead;
And at your summons fast I sped,
Buoyant as one a goal who nears.
Ah! lost, dead love! I woke in tears;
For as I neared you farther fled!

ASPIRATION.

God knows I strive against low lust and vice,
Wound in the net of their voluptuous hair;
God knows that all their kisses are as ice
To me who do not care.

God knows, against the front of Fate I set
Eyes still and stern, and lips as bitter prest;
Raised clenched and ineffectual palms to let
Her rock-like pressing breast!

God knows what motive such large zeal inspires,
God knows the star for which I climb and crave,
God knows, and only God, the eating fires
That in my bosom rave.

I will not fall! I will not; thou dost lie!
Deep Hell! that seethest in thy simmering pit;
Thy thousand throned horrors shall not vie,
Or ever compass it!

But as thou sinkest from my soul away,
So shall I rise, rolled in the morning's rose,
Beyond this world, this life, this little day--
God knows! God knows! God knows!

SPRING TWILIGHT.

The sun set late, and left along the West
One furious ruby rare, whose rosy rays
Poured in a slumb'rous cloud's pear-curdled breast,
Blossomed to peachy sprays.

The sun set late, and wafts of wind arose,
And cuffed the blossom from the blossoming quince;
Shatter red attar vials of the rose,
And made the clover wince.

By dusking forests, thro' whose fretful boughs
In flying fragments shot the evening's flame,
Adown the tangled lane the quiet cows
With dreary tinklings came.

The sun set late; but hardly had he gone
When o'er the moon's