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VII.

How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
Came in, each one, for his right of trover?
-When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
Made of her eggs the stately deposit,

And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface
As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

VIII.

All that life and fun and romping,

All that frisking and twisting and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping, And clasps were cracking, and covers suppling!

As if you had carried sour John Knox

To the playhouse at Paris, Vienna, or Munich, Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

IX.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?
Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-by, mother-beetle; husband-eft, Sufficit!

See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment day!

IN THREE DAYS.

I.

So, I shall see her in three days
And just one night, but nights are short,
Then two long hours, and that is morn.
See how I come, unchanged, unworn!
Feel, where my life broke off from thine,
How fresh the splinters keep and fine,--
Only a touch, and we combine!

II.

Too long, this time of year, the days!
But nights, at least the nights are short,
As night shows where her one moon is,
A hand's-breadth of pure light and bliss,
So life's night gives my lady birth

And my eyes hold her! What is worth
The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?

III.

O loaded curls! release your store
Of warmth and scent, as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Outbreaking into fairy sparks,
When under curl and curl I pried
After the warmth and scent inside,
Through lights and darks how manifold-
The dark inspired, the light controlled,
As early Art embrowns the gold!

IV.

What great fear, should one say, "Three days,
That change the world, might change as well
Your fortune; and if joy delays,

Be happy that no worse befell!"
What small fear, if another says,

"Three days and one short night beside
May throw no shadow on your ways;
But years must teem with change untried,
With chance not easily defied,

With an end somewhere undescried."

No fear! or, if a fear be born
This minute, fear dies out in scorn.
Fear? I shall see her in three days

And one night, now the nights are short,
Then just two hours, and that is morn!

THE LOST MISTRESS.

I.

ALL'S over, then does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?

Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
About the cottage eaves!

II.

And the leaf buds on the vine are woolly,

I noticed that to-day ;

One day more bursts them open fully:
You know the red turns gray.

III.

To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest? May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we,-well, friends the merest Keep much that I resign.

IV.

Each glance of the eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart's endeavor,-
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul forever,--

V.

Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;

I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!

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ALL June I bound the rose in sheaves,
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.

She will not turn aside? Alas!

Let them lie. Suppose they die?

The chance was they might take her eye.

II.

How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute !

To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music's wing;
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

III.

My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion-heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!
Lose who may--I still can say,

Those who win heaven, blest are they!

RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI.

I.

I KNOW a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives
First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves
The world; and, vainly favored, it repays
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze
By no change of its large calm front of snow.
And, underneath the Mount, a Flower I know,
He cannot have perceived, that changes ever
At his approach; and, in the lost endeavor
To live his life, has parted, one by one,
With all a flower's true graces for the grace
Of being but a foolish mimic sun,
With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount
As over many a land of theirs its large
Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe

Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie,
Each to its proper praise and own account:
Men call the Flower the Sunflower, sportively.

II.

O Angel of the East! one, one gold look
Across the waters to this twilight nook,
-The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook!

III.

Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed?
Go!-saying ever as thou dost proceed,
That I, French Rudel, choose for my device
A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice
Before its idol. See! These inexpert
And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt

The woven picture; 'tis a woman's skill
Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill
Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed
On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees
On my flower's breast, as on a platform broad:
But, as the flower's concern is not for these

But solely for the sun, so men applaud

In vain this Rudel, he not looking here

But to the East-the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear!

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smile!

STILL you stand, still you listen, still you
Still melts your moonbeam through me, white a while,
Softening, sweetening, till sweet and soft
Increase so round this heart of mine that oft

I could believe your moonbeam smile has past

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