Part 6 (1/2)

X.

Not love of you is most that I can bring, Since what I am to love you is the test, And should I love you more than any thing You would but be of idle love possessed, A mere love wandering in appet.i.te, Counting your glories and yet bringing none, Finding in you occasions of delight, A thief of payment for no service done.

But when of labouring life I make a song And bring it you, as that were my reward, To let what most is me to you belong, Then do I come of high possessions lord, And loving life more than my love of you I give you love more excellently true.

XI.

What better tale could any lover tell When age or death his reckoning shall write Than thus, 'Love taught me only to rebel Against these things,--the thieving of delight Without return; the gospellers of fear Who, loving, yet deny the truth they bear, Sad-suited l.u.s.ts with lecherous hands to smear The cloth of gold they would but dare not wear.

And love gave me great knowledge of the trees, And singing birds, and earth with all her flowers; Wisdom I knew and righteousness in these, I lived in their atonement all my hours; Love taught me how to beauty's eye alone The secret of the lying heart is known.'

XII.

This then at last; we may be wiser far Than love, and put his folly to our measure, Yet shall we learn, poor wizards that we are, That love chimes not nor motions at our pleasure.

We bid him come, and light an eager fire, And he goes down the road without debating; We cast him from the house of our desire, And when at last we leave he will be waiting.

And in the end there is no folly but this, To counsel love out of our little learning.

For still he knows where rotten timber is, And where the boughs for the long winter burning; And when life needs no more of us at all, Love's word will be the last that we recall.

JOHN FREEMAN

I WILL ASK

I will ask primrose and violet to spend for you Their smell and hue, And the bold, trembling anemone awhile to spare Her flowers starry fair; Or the flushed wild apple and yet sweeter thorn Their sweetness to keep Longer than any fire-bosomed flower born Between midnight and midnight deep.

And I will take celandine, nettle and parsley, white In its own green light, Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadow-sweet Lifting at your feet, And ivy-blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take The loveliest-- The seeding gra.s.ses that bend with the winds, and shake Though the winds are at rest.

'For me?' you will ask. 'Yes! surely they wave for you Their smell and hue, And you away all that is rare were so much less By your missed happiness.'

Yet I know gra.s.s and weed, ivy and apple and thorn Their whole sweet would keep, Though in Eden no human spirit on a s.h.i.+ning morn Had awaked from sleep.

THE EVENING SKY

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd With eyes of dazzling bright Shakes Venus mid the twined boughs of the night; Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping From low bough to bough, Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed Its bloom of snow By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer, Not thus idly dancing goes Flus.h.i.+ng the eternal orchard with wild rose.

She through ether burns Outpacing planetary earth, And ere two years triumphantly returns, And again wave-like swelling flows, And again her flas.h.i.+ng apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen, No heavenly courses set, No flight unpausing through a void serene: But when eve clears, Arises Venus as she first uprose Stepping the shaken boughs among, And in her bosom glows The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

She shakes the cl.u.s.tered stars Lightly, as she goes Amid the unseen branches of the night, Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.