My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn,
To death, because they never lived: but I

Have lived indeed, and so--(yet one more kiss) --can die!

A LOVERS' QUARREL.

I.

OH, what a dawn of day!

How the March sun feels like May!

All is blue again

After last night's rain,

And the South dries the hawthorn spray
Only, my Love's away!

I'd as lief that the blue were gray.

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,

Must be dancing down the dell,

With a foaming head

On the beryl bed

Paven smooth as a hermit's cell:

Each with a tale to tell,

Could my Love but attend as well.

III.

Dearest, three months ago,

When we lived blocked up with snow,

When the wind would edge

In and in his wedge,

In, as far as the point could go—

Not to our ingle, though,

Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!

We devised games out of straws.

We would try and trace

One another's face

In the ash, as an artist draws;

Free on each other's flaws,

How we chattered like two church daws!

V.

What's in the " Times"?- -a scold
At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride

To his grewsome side,

That's as fair as himself is bold:
There they sit ermine-stoled,
And she powders her hair with gold.

VI.

Fancy the Pampas' sheen!

Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow
In a solid glow,

And to break now and then the screen-
Black neck and eyeballs keen,
Up a wild horse leaps between !

VII.

Try, will our table turn?

Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips

Through the finger-tips

In a fire which a few discern,

And a very few feel burn,

And the rest, they may live and learn!

And you turn into such a man!
Just the two spots that span
Half the bill of the young male swan.

XI.

Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow
With his hand's first sweep
Put the earth to sleep

'Twas a time when the heart could show
All-how was earth to know,
'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro?

XII.

Dearest, three months ago

When we loved each other so,
Lived and loved the same

Till an evening came

When a shaft from the Devil's bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow.

And the friends were friend and foe!

XIII.

Not from the heart beneath

'Twas a bubble born of breath,
Neither sneer nor vaunt,
Nor reproach nor taunt.
See a word, how it severeth!
Oh, power of life and death

In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!

XIV.

Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You,-
Since, as truth is true,

I was You all the happy past--
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?

XV.

Love, if you knew the light

That your soul casts in my sight,

How I look to you

For the pure and true,

And the beauteous and the right,-

Bear with a moment's spite

When a mere mote threats the white!

XVI.

What of a hasty word?

Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm's pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?
See the eye, by a fly's-foot blurred-
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain's coat of curd!

XVII.

Foul be the world or fair

More or less, how can I care?
'Tis the world the same
For my praise or blame,
And endurance is easy there.
Wrong in the one thing rare-
Oh, it is hard to bear!

XVIII.

Here's the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows;
We shall have the word

In a minor third

There is none but the cuckoo knows:
Heaps of the guelder-rose!
I must bear with it, I suppose.

XIX.

Could but November come,

Were the noisy birds struck dumb
At the warning slash

Of his driver's-lash

I would laugh like the valiant Thumb
Facing the castle glum

And the giant's fee-faw-fum!

XX.

Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped

We can stand apart,

Heart dispense with heart

In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,-
Oh, the world's hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!

XXI.

Each in the crypt would cry,

But one freezes here! and why?

When a heart, as chill,

At my own would thrill

Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
Heart, shall we live or die?
The rest... settle by and by!"

XXII.

So, she'd efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
It is twelve o'clock:

I shall hear her knock

In the worst of a storm's uproar :
I shall pull her through the door,
I shall have her for evermore !

EARTH'S IMMORTALITIES.

FAME.

SEE, as the prettiest graves will do in time,
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime ;
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods
Have struggled through its binding osier rods ;
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,
Wanting the brick-work promised by and by;
How the minute gray lichens, plate o'er plate,
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!

LOVE.

So, the year's done with!
(Love me forever!)
All March begun with,
April's endeavor;
May-wreaths that bound me

June needs must sever;
Now snows fall round me,
Quenching June's fever-
(Love me forever!)

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER.

I.

I SAID- -Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,

Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,

Since this was written and needs must be

My whole heart rises up to bless