MAY AND DEATH.

1.

I WISH that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of spring's delightful things;
Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.

II.

A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps !
There must be many a pair of friends
Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm
Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

III.

So, for their sake, be May still May!
Let their new time, as mine of old,
Do all it did for me: I bid

Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

IV.

Only, one little sight, one plant,

Woods have in May, that starts up green

Save a sole streak which, so to speak,

Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,—

V.

That, they might spare; a certain wood
Might miss the plant; their loss were small:
But I-whene'er the leaf grows there,

Its drop comes from my heart, that's all.

ΙΟ

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ALL that I know

Of a certain star Is, it can throw

MY STAR.

Like the angled sparNow a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue;

Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

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ΤΟ

ONE WORD MORE.

To E. B. B.

I.

THERE they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!

Take them, Love, the book and me together.
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II.

Rafael made a century of sonnets,

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Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil

Else he only used to draw Madonnas.

These, the world might view-but one, the volume.
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her lifetime?

ΤΟ

Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,

Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory,
Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving-
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's,
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?

III.

You and I would rather read that volume (Taken to his beating bosom by it),

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Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—
Her, San Sisto names, and her, Foligno,
Her that visits Florence in a vision,
Her that's left with lilies in the Louvre-
Seen by us and all the world in circle.

IV.

You and I will never read that volume.
Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple

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Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.
Guido Reni dying, all Bologna

Cried, and the world with it, 'Ours the treasure!'
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

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V.

Dante once prepared to paint an angel :

Whom to please? You whisper 'Beatrice.'

While he mused and traced it and retraced it
(Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Florence)-
Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante standing, studying his angel,-
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.
Says he 'Certain people of importance'
(Such he gave his daily, dreadful line to)
'Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.'
Says the poet, 'Then I stopped my painting.'

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ONE WORD MORE.

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VI.

You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,-
Would we not?-than read a fresh Inferno.

VII.

You and I will never see that picture.

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While he mused on love and Beatrice,
While he softened o'er his outlined angel,

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In they broke, those 'people of importance:'
We and Bice bear the loss forever.

VIII.

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
This no artist lives and loves that longs not
Once, and only once, and for one only
(Ah, the prize!), to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient--

Using nature that 's an art to others,

Not, this one time, art that 's turned his nature.
Ay, of all the artists living, loving,

None but would forego his proper dowry-
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem-
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
Once, and only once, and for one only,
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.

IX.

Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement ! He who smites the rock and spreads the water,

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