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DAISY.

Where the thistle lifts a purple crown
Six foot out of the turf,

And the harebell shakes on the windy hill-
O the breath of the distant surf!—

The hills look over on the South,

And southward dreams the sea;

And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand,
Came innocence and she.

Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry
Red for the gatherer springs,
Two children did we stray and talk
Wise, idle, childish things.

She listened with big-lipped surprise,
Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine:
Her skin was like a grape, whose veins
Run snow instead of wine.

She knew not those sweet words she spake,
Nor knew her own sweet way;

But there's never a bird, so sweet a song
Thronged in whose throat that day!

Oh, there were flowers in Storrington
On the turf and on the spray;

But the sweetest flower on the Sussex hills
Was the Daisy-flower that day!

Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face! She gave me tokens three :

A look, a word of her winsome mouth,

And a wild raspberry.

A berry red, a guileless look,

A still word,—strings of sand!

And yet they made my wild, wild heart

Fly down to her little hand.

For standing artless as the air,

And candid as the skies,

She took the berries with her hand,
And the love with her sweet eyes.

The fairest things have fleetest end:
Their scent survives their close,
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To him that loved the rose !

She looked a little wistfully,

Then went her sunshine way :—

The sea's eye had a mist on it,
And the leaves fell from the day.

She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me

The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.

She left me marvelling while my soul
Was sad that she was glad ;
At all the sadness in the sweet,
The sweetness in the sad.

Still, still I seemed to see her, still
Look up with soft replies,

And take the berries with her hand,
And the love with her lovely eyes.

Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain,
And perish in our own. ¡

LOVE DECLARED.

I looked, she drooped, and neither spoke, and cold
We stood, how unlike all forecasted thought
Of that desirèd minute! Then I leaned
Doubting; whereat she lifted-oh, brave eyes
Unfrighted:-forward like a wind-blown flame
Came bosom and mouth to mine!

That falling kiss

Touching long-laid expectance, all went up

Suddenly into passion; yea, the night

Caught, blazed, and wrapt us round in vibrant fire.

Time's beating wing subsided, and the winds

Caught up their breathing, and the world's great pulse
Stayed in mid-throb, and the wild train of life
Reeled by, and left us stranded on a hush.

This moment is a statue unto Love

Carved from a fair white silence.

Lo, he stands

Within us-are we not one now, one, one roof,

His roof, and the partition of weak flesh

Gone down before him, and no more, for ever?—
Stands like a bird new-lit, and as he lit,

Poised in our quiet being; only, only

Within our shaken hearts the air of passion,
Cleft by his sudden coming, eddies still

And whirs round his enchanted movelessness.

A film of trance between two strivings! Lo,

It bursts; yet dream's snapped links cling round the limbs Of waking like a running evening stream

:

Which no man hears, or sees, or knows to run,
(Glazed with dim quiet,) save that there the moon
Is shattered to a creamy flicker of flame,

Our eyes' sweet trouble were hid, save that the love
Trembles a little on their impassioned calms.

FREDERIC HERBERT TRENCH

THE incomparable legend of Deirdre may, for aught I know, have found its predestined poet in the Irish tongue; but in English it as yet awaits him. It cannot, surely, have long to wait; indeed, one rather wonders that there should not be a rush for the usufruct of so glorious a theme. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Trench may be held to have "staked out his claim" in Deirdre Wed. His poem cannot be regarded as more than a preliminary study for the epic yet to be; but if he himself regards it in that lighta point on which I have no information-one must gladly admit it to be a preliminary study of very high promise.

6

"This episode of thirty hours," says Mr. Trench, "does not occur in any of the versions of the famous Tragical Tale of the Sons of Usnach.'" In other words, the episode is a thing of his own invention, outside and apart from the actual legend. In just such a fashion would a poet, in doubt as to the best form in which to cast an ambitious work, make his experimental essays. He would not care to prove his tools on any portion of his actual theme, but would rather choose for that purpose a piece of similar material, which would form no necessary part of the ultimate fabric. Mr. Trench is even at some pains, as it seems to me, to emphasise the tentative nature of his present effort. It is difficult to account otherwise for the elaborate and quite disproportionate machinery which he applies to the narration

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