She is worthy of praise,

For this grief of her giving is worth All the joy of my days

That lie between death's day and birth, All the lordship of things upon earth. Nay, what have I said?

I would not be glad if I could ;

My dream and my dread

Are of her, and for her sake I would

That my life were fled.

Lo, sweet, if I durst not pray to you,

Then were I dead;

If I sang not a little to say to you,

(Could it be said)

O my love, how my heart would be fed ; Ah sweet who hast hold of my heart,

For thy love's sake I live,

Do but tell me, ere either depart,
What a lover may give

For a woman so fair as thou art.

The lovers that disbelieve,

False rumours shall grieve And evil-speaking shall part.

BEFORE PARTING.

A

MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb

Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,

And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine's heart has burst;

Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it,

The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet,

To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise Over face and eyes.

my

And yet who knows what end the scythed wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
They grow a month and are cast under feet
And none has care thereof,

As none has care of a divided love.

I know each shadow of your lips by rote,
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
The fashion of fair temples tremulous

With tender blood, and colour of your

throat;

I know not how love is gone out of this,
Seeing that all was his.

Love's likeness there endures upon all these :
But out of these one shall not gather love.
Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough
To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
As some bee-builded cell

Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell.

I know not how this last month leaves your hair
Less full of purple colour and hid spice,
And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
Worth patience to regret.

THE SUNDEW.

A

LITTLE marsh-plant, yellow green,

And pricked at lip with tender red. Tread close, and either way you tread Some faint black water jets between Lest you should bruise the curious head.

A live thing may be; who shall know ?
The summer knows and suffers it;
For the cool moss is thick and sweet
Each side, and saves the blossom so
That it lives out the long June heat.

The deep scent of the heather burns
About it; breathless though it be,
Bow down and worship; more than we
Is the least flower whose life returns,
Least weed renascent in the sea.

We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight With wants, with many memories;

These see their mother what she is,

Glad-growing, till August leave more bright The apple-coloured cranberries.

Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,
Blown all one way to shelter it

From trample of strayed kine, with feet
Felt heavier than the moorhen was,
Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.

You call it sundew: how it grows,
If with its colour it have breath,
If life taste sweet to it, if death
Pain its soft petal, no man knows:
Man has no sight or sense that saith.

My sundew, grown of gentle days,
In these green miles the spring begun
Thy growth ere April had half done
With the soft secret of her ways
Or June made ready for the sun.

O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,

I have a secret halved with thee.
The name that is love's name to me
Thou knowest, and the face of her
Who is my festival to see.