e.
[Decoration]
_SONG._
Two doves upon the selfsame branch,
Two lilies on a single stem,
Two butterflies upon one flower:--
O happy they who look on them.
Who look upon them hand in hand
Flushed in the rosy summer light;
Who look upon them hand in hand
And never give a thought to night.
[Decoration]
_THREE SEASONS._
"A cup for hope!" she said,
In springtime ere the bloom was old:
The crimson wine was poor and cold
By her mouth's richer red.
"A cup for love!" how low,
How soft the words; and all the while
Her blush was rippling with a smile
Like summer after snow.
"A cup for memory!"
Cold cup that one must drain alone:
While autumn winds are up and moan
Across the barren sea.
Hope, memory, love:
Hope for fair morn, and love for day,
And memory for the evening gray
And solitary dove.
[Decoration]
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
1828-1882.
_A LITTLE WHILE._
A little while a little love
The hour yet bears for thee and me
Who have not drawn the veil to see
If still our heaven be lit above.
Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
And I have heard the night-wind cry
And deemed its speech mine own.
A little while a little love
The scattering autumn hoards for us
Whose bower is not yet ruinous
Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
Only across the shaken boughs
We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
And deep in both our hearts they rouse
One wail for thee and me.
A little while a little love
May yet be ours who have not said
The word it makes our eyes afraid
To know that each is thinking of.
Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
In smiles a little season yet:
I 'll tell thee, when the end is come,
How we may best forget.
[Decoration]
_SUDDEN LIGHT._
I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.
Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time's eddying flight
Still with our lives our loves restore
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