VI.

You lounged, like a boy of the South,
Cap and blouse—nay, a bit of beard too;
Or you got it, rubbing your mouth

With fingers the clay adhered to.

VII.

And I soon managed to find

Weak points in the flower-fence facing,

Was forced to put up a blind

And be safe in my corset-lacing.

VIII.

No harm! It was not my fault

If you never turned your eye's tail up As I shook upon E in alt.,

Or ran the chromatic scale up;

IX.

For spring bade the sparrows pair,

And the boys and girls gave guesses,

And stalls in our street looked rare

With bulrush and watercresses.

X.

Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power

Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

XI.

I did look, sharp as a lynx

(And yet the memory rankles) When models arrived, some minx

Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles.

45

XII.

But I think I gave you as good!

'That foreign fellow-who can know

How she pays, in a playful mood,

For his tuning her that piano?'

XIII.

Could you say so, and never say

Suppose we join hands and fortunes,

And I fetch her from over the way,

Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?'

XIV.

No, no; you would not be rash,

Nor I rasher and something over: You've to settle yet Gibson's hash, And Grisi yet lives in clover.

XV.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I'm queen myself at bals-parés,

I've married a rich old lord,

And you 're dubbed knight and an R.A.

XVI.

Each life's unfulfilled, you see;

It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,-been happy.

XVII.

And nobody calls you a dunce,

And people suppose me clever;

This could but have happened once,

And we missed it, lost it forever.

50

55

60

65

SONG.

From 'A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON.'

THERE'S a woman like a dewdrop, she 's so purer than the

purest ;

And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith 's the surest;

And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth

of lustre

Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild

grape cluster,

Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted

marble:

5

Then her voice's music-call it the well's bubbling, the bird's warble!

And this woman says, 'My days were sunless and my nights were moonless,

Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's outbreak tuneless,

If

you loved me not!'

―adore her,

And I who-ah, for words of flame!

Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before

I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me, And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers

she makes me!

5

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.

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.

ΤΟ