Part 114

To my early love from my future bride One moment I looked. Then I stole to the door, I traversed the passage; and down at her side I was sitting, a moment more.

My thinking of her, or the music's strain, Or something which never will be expressed, Had brought her back from the grave again, With the jasmine in her breast.

She is not dead, and she is not wed! But she loves me now, and she loved me then! And the very first word that her sweet lips said, My heart grew youthful again.

The Marchioness there, of Carabas, She is wealthy, and young, and handsome still, And but for her . . . well, we'll let that pass, She may marry whomever she will.

But I will marry my own first love, With her primrose face: for old things are best, And the flower in her bosom, I prize it above The brooch in my lady's breast.

The world is filled with folly and sin, And Love must cling where it can, I say: For Beauty is easy enough to win; But one isn't loved every day.

And I think, in the lives of most women and men, There's a moment when all would go smooth and even, If only the dead could find out when To come back, and be forgiven.

But O the smell of that jasmine-flower! And O that music! and O the way That voice rang out from the donjon tower, Non ti scordar di me, Non ti scordar di me!

Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton [1831-1891]

SONG

I saw the day's white rapture Die in the sunset's flame, But all her shining beauty Lives like a deathless name.

Our lamps of joy are wasted, Gone is Love's hallowed light; But you and I remember Through every starlit night.

Charles Hanson Towne [1877-

THE LONELY ROAD

I think thou waitest, Love, beyond the Gate - Eager, with wind-stirred ripples in thy hair; I have not found thee, and the hour is late, And harsh the weight I bear.

Far have I sought, and flung my wealth of years Like a young traveler, gay at careless inns - See how the wine-stain whitens 'neath the tears My burden wins!

And wilt thou know me, Love, with bended back, Or wilt thou scorn me, in so drear a guise? I have a wealth of sorrows in my pack, One lonely prize -

Thy dream - and dross of sin. . . . O, dim the fields - I may not find thee in so dark a land - Yet I await what hope the turning yields And beg with empty hand.

Kenneth Rand [1891-

EVENSONG

Beauty calls and gives no warning, Shadows rise and wander on the day. In the twilight, in the quiet evening, We shall rise and smile and go away. Over the flaming leaves Freezes the sky. It is the season grieves, Not you, not I. All our spring-times, all our summers, We have kept the longing warm within. Now we leave the after-comers To attain the dreams we did not win. Oh, we have wakened, Sweet, and had our birth, And that's the end of earth; And we have toiled and smiled and kept the light, And that's the end of night.

Ridgely Torrence [1875-

THE NYMPH'S SONG TO HYLAS From "The Life and Death of Jason"

I know a little garden-close Set thick with lily and red rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy dawn to dewy night, And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing, And though no pillared house is there, And though the apple boughs are bare Of fruit and blossom, would to God, Her feet upon the green grass trod, And I beheld them as before!

There comes a murmur from the shore, And in the close two fair streams are, Drawn from the purple hills afar, Drawn down unto the restless sea; Dark hills whose heath-bloom feeds no bee, Dark shore no ship has ever seen, Tormented by the billows green, Whose murmur comes unceasingly Unto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night, For which I let slip all delight, Whereby I grow both deaf and blind, Careless to win, unskilled to find, And quick to lose what all men seek.

Yet tottering as I am, and weak, Still have I left a little breath To seek within the jaws of death An entrance to that happy place; To seek the unforgotten face Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me Anigh the murmuring of the sea.