Part 15

A SUNSET OF WATTEAU.

LUI.

THE silk sail fills, the soft winds wake, Arise and tempt the seas; Our ocean is the Palace lake, Our waves the ripples that we make Among the mirrored trees.

ELLE.

Nay, sweet the shore, and sweet the song, And dear the languid dream; The music mingled all day long With paces of the dancing throng, And murmur of the stream.

An hour ago, an hour ago, We rested in the shade; And now, why should we seek to know What way the wilful waters flow? There is no fairer glade.

LUI.

Nay, pleasure flits, and we must sail, And seek him everywhere; Perchance in sunset’s golden pale He listens to the nightingale, Amid the perfumed air.

Come, he has fled; you are not you, And I no more am I; Delight is changeful as the hue Of heaven, that is no longer blue In yonder sunset sky.

ELLE.

Nay, if we seek we shall not find, If we knock none openeth; Nay, see, the sunset fades behind The mountains, and the cold night wind Blows from the house of Death.

A NATIVITY OF SANDRO BOTTICELLI.

‘WROUGHT in the troublous times of Italy By Sandro Botticelli,’ when for fear Of that last judgment, and last day drawn near To end all labour and all revelry, He worked and prayed in silence; this is she That by the holy cradle sees the bier, And in spice gifts the hyssop on the spear, And out of Bethlehem, Gethsemane.

Between the gold sky and the green o’er head, The twelve great shining angels, garlanded, Marvel upon this face, wherein combine The mother’s love that shone on all of us, And maiden rapture that makes luminous The brows of Margaret and Catherine.

SONGS AND SONNETS

TWO HOMES.

To a young English lady in the Hospital of the Wounded at Carlsruhe. Sept. 1870.

WHAT does the dim gaze of the dying find To waken dream or memory, seeing you? In your sweet eyes what other eyes are blue, And in your hair what gold hair on the wind Floats of the days gone almost out of mind? In deep green valleys of the Fatherland He may remember girls with locks like thine; May dream how, where the waiting angels stand, Some lost love’s eyes are dim before they shine With welcome:—so past homes, or homes to be, He sees a moment, ere, a moment blind, He crosses Death’s inhospitable sea, And with brief passage of those barren lands Comes to the home that is not made with hands.

SUMMER’S ENDING.

THE flags below the shadowy fern Shine like spears between sun and sea, The tide and the summer begin to turn, And ah, for hearts, for hearts that yearn, For fires of autumn that catch and burn, For love gone out between thee and me.

The wind is up, and the weather broken, Blue seas, blue eyes, are grieved and grey, Listen, the word that the wind has spoken, Listen, the sound of the sea,—a token That summer’s over, and troths are broken,— That loves depart as the hours decay.

A love has passed to the loves passed over, A month has fled to the months gone by; And none may follow, and none recover July and June, and never a lover May stay the wings of the Loves that hover, As fleet as the light in a sunset sky.

NIGHTINGALE WEATHER.

‘Serai-je nonnette, oui ou non? Serai-je nonnette? je crois que non. Derrière chez mon père Il est un bois taillis, Le rossignol y chante Et le jour et le nuit. Il chaste pour les filles Qui n’ont pas d’ami; Il ne chante pas pour moi, J’en ai un, Dieu merci.’—OLD FRENCH.

* * * * *

I’LL never be a nun, I trow, While apple bloom is white as snow, But far more fair to see; I’ll never wear nun’s black and white While nightingales make sweet the night Within the apple tree.

Ah, listen! ’tis the nightingale, And in the wood he makes his wail, Within the apple tree; He singeth of the sore distress Of many ladies loverless; Thank God, no song for me.

For when the broad May moon is low, A gold fruit seen where blossoms blow In the boughs of the apple tree, A step I know is at the gate; Ah love, but it is long to wait Until night’s noon bring thee!