Part 17

Thus are the days when I was a boy; Sweet while I lived in them, dear now they’re gone: I feel them no longer, but still, O still They tell of the heavens to me.

SONG SPRING

WHEN buds of palm do burst and spread Their downy feathers in the lane, And orchard blossoms, white and red, Breathe Spring delight for Autumn gain; And the skylark shakes his wings in the rain;

O then is the season to look for a bride! Choose her warily, woo her unseen; For the choicest maids are those that hide Like dewy violets under the green.

SONG AUTUMN

WHEN nuts behind the hazel-leaf Are brown as the squirrel that hunts them free, And the fields are rich with the sun-burnt sheaf, ’Mid the blue cornflower and the yellowing tree; And the farmer glows and beams in his glee;

O then is the season to wed thee a bride! Ere the garners are filled and the ale-cups foam; For a smiling hostess is the pride And flower of every Harvest Home.

SORROWS AND JOYS

BURY thy sorrows, and they shall rise As souls to the immortal skies, And there look down like mothers’ eyes.

But let thy joys be fresh as flowers, That suck the honey of the showers, And bloom alike on huts and towers.

So shall thy days be sweet and bright; Solemn and sweet thy starry night, Conscious of love each change of light.

The stars will watch the flowers asleep, The flowers will feel the soft stars weep, And both will mix sensations deep.

With these below, with those above, Sits evermore the brooding dove, Uniting both in bonds of love.

For both by nature are akin; Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin, And joy, the juice of life within.

Children of earth are these; and those The spirits of divine repose— Death radiant o’er all human woes.

O, think what then had been thy doom, If homeless and without a tomb They had been left to haunt the gloom!

O, think again what now they are— Motherly love, tho’ dim and far, Imaged in every lustrous star.

For they, in their salvation, know No vestige of their former woe, While thro’ them all the heavens do flow.

Thus art thou wedded to the skies, And watched by ever-loving eyes, And warned by yearning sympathies.

SONG

THE flower unfolds its dawning cup, And the young sun drinks the star-dews up, At eve it droops with the bliss of day, And dreams in the midnight far away.

So am I in thy sole, sweet glance Pressed with a weight of utterance; Lovingly all my leaves unfold, And gleam to the beams of thirsty gold.

At eve I droop, for then the swell Of feeling falters forth farewell;— At midnight I am dreaming deep, Of what has been, in blissful sleep.

When—ah! when will love’s own fight Wed me alike thro’ day and night, When will the stars with their linking charms Wake us in each other’s arms?

SONG

THOU to me art such a spring As the Arab seeks at eve, Thirsty from the shining sands; There to bathe his face and hands, While the sun is taking leave, And dewy sleep is a delicious thing.

Thou to me art such a dream As he dreams upon the grass, While the bubbling coolness near Makes sweet music in his ear; And the stars that slowly pass In solitary grandeur o’er him gleam.

Thou to me art such a dawn As the dawn whose ruddy kiss Wakes him to his darling steed; And again the desert speed, And again the desert bliss, Lightens thro’ his veins, and he is gone!