Part 6 (1/2)

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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 why 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 other's pain, And perish in our own.

TO OLIVIA

I fear to love thee, Sweet, because Love's the amba.s.sador of loss; White flake of childhood, clinging so To my soiled raiment, thy shy snow At tenderest touch will shrink and go.

Love me not, delightful child.

My heart, by many snares beguiled, Has grown timorous and wild.

It would fear thee not at all, Wert thou not so harmless-small.

Because thy arrows, not yet dire, Are still unbarbed with destined fire, I fear thee more than hadst thou stood Full-panoplied in womanhood.

AN ARAB LOVE-SONG

The hunched camels of the night[3]

Trouble the bright And silver waters of the moon.

The Maiden of the Morn will soon Through Heaven stray and sing, Star gathering.

Now while the dark about our loves is strewn, Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come!

And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.

Leave thy father, leave thy mother And thy brother; Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart!

Am I not thy father and thy brother, And thy mother?

And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?

FOOTNOTES:

[3] (Cloud-shapes observed by travellers in the East.)

_A. E. Housman_

A. E. Housman was born March 26, 1859, and, after a cla.s.sical education, he was, for ten years, a Higher Division Clerk in H. M.

Patent Office. Later in life, he became a teacher.