O fair and dreadful is the maid who dwells

Between the two seas at the Dardanelles,

As fair and dread as in the ancient

years; And still the world is filled with her spells.

sons of men, that toil, and love with tears!

HAS SUMMER COME WITHOUT THE ROSE?

HAS summer come without the rose,
Or left the bird behind?
Is the blue changed above thee,

O world! or am I blind?

Will you change every flower that grows,
Or only change this spot,
Where she who said, I love thee,
Now says, I love thee not?

The skies seem'd true above thee,

The rose true on the tree;

The bird seem'd true the summer through,
But all prov'd false to me.

World, is there one good thing in you,
Life, love, or death or what?
Since lips that sang, I love thee,

Have said, I love thee not?

IF SHE BUT KNEW

If she but knew that I am weeping
Still for her sake,

That love and sorrow grow with keeping
Till they must break,

My heart that breaking will adore her, Be hers and die ;

If she might hear me once implore her Would she not sigh?

If she but knew that it would save me
Her voice to hear,

Saying she pitied me, forgave me,
Must she forbear?

If she were told that I was dying,
Would she be dumb?

Could she content herself with sighing?
Would she not come ?

With no delaying, over shore and deep! Be with my lady when she wakes from sleep;

Touch her with kisses softly on each eye;

And say, before she puts her dreaming by:

"Within the palaces of slumber keep

One little niche wherein sometimes to weep For one who vainly toils till he shall die!' Yet say again, a sweeter thing than this: "His life is wasted by his love for thee." Then, looking o'er the fields of memory, She 'll find perchance, o'ergrown with grief and bliss,

Some flower of recollection, pale and fair, That she, through pity, for a day may wear.

A VAIN WISH

I WOULD not, could I, make thy life as mine;

Only I would, if such a thing might be, Thou shouldst not, love, forget me utterly; Yea, when the sultry stars of summer shine

Marston

On dreaming woods, where nightingales

repine,

I would that at such times should come to thee

Some thought not quite unmix'd with pain, of me,

Some little sorrow for a soul's decline. Yea, too, I would that through thy brightest times,

Like the sweet burden of remember'd rhymes,

That gentle sadness should be with thee, dear;

And when the gates of sleep are on thee shut,

I would not, even then, it should be mute,

But murmur, shell-like, at thy spirit's ear.

LOVE'S MUSIC

LOVE held a harp between his hands, and, lo!

The master hand, upon the harp-strings laid

By way of prelude, such a sweet tune play'd'

As made the heart with happy tears o'er flow;

HOW MY SONG OF HER BEGAN
GOD made my lady lovely to behold,
Above the painter's dream he set her face,
And wrought her body in divinest grace;
He touch'd the brown hair with a sense of
gold;

And in the perfect form He did enfold
What was alone as perfect, the sweet heart;
Knowledge most rare to her He did impart ;
And fill'd with love and worship all her
days.

And then God thought Him how it would be well

To give her music; and to Love He said, "Bring thou some minstrel now that he may tell

How fair and sweet a thing My hands have made."

Then at Love's call I came, bow'd down my head,

And at His will my lyre grew audible.

The sepulchre vast and strange?
Do they long for the days to go over,
And bring that miraculous change?

Or love they their night with no moonlight,
With no starlight, no dawn to its gloom?
Do they sigh: "'Neath the snow, or the
bloom

Of the wild things that wave from our night,

We are warm, through winter and summer;
We hear the winds rave, and we say :
'The storm-wind blows over our heads,
But we here are out of its way'"?

Do they mumble low, one to another,
With a sense that the waters that thunder
Shall ingather them all, draw them under:
"Ah, how long to our moving, my brother?
How long shall we quietly rest here,
In graves of darkness and ease ?
The waves, even now, may be on us,
To draw us down under the seas! "

Do they think 't will be cold when the waters That they love not, that neither can love them,

Shall eternally thunder above them?
Have they dread of the sea's shining daugh-
ters,

That people the bright sea-regions
And play with the young sea-kings?
Have they dread of their cold embraces,
And dread of all strange sea-things?

But their dread or their joy, it is bootless: They shall pass from the breast of their mother;

They shall lie low, dead brother by brother,
In a place that is radiant and fruitless;
And the folk that sail over their heads
In violent weather

Shall come down to them, haply, and all
They shall lie there together.

It was the strangest, subtlest, sweetest sound :

It seem'd above me, seem'd upon the ground,

Then swiftly seem'd to eddy round and round,

Till I said: "To-night the air is
Surely full of garden fairies."

And all at once it seem'd I grew aware
That little, shining presences were there,
White shapes and red shapes danced upon
the air;

Then a peal of silver laughter,
And such singing followed after

As none of you, I think, have ever heard.
More soft it was than call of any bird,
Note after note, exquisitely deferr'd,

Soft as dew-drops when they settle
In a fair flower's open petal.

"What are these fairies?" to myself I said;

For answer, then, as from a garden's bed,
On the cold air a sudden scent was shed,
Scent of lilies, scent of roses,
Scent of Summer's sweetest posies.

And said a small, sweet voice within my ear: "We flowers, that sleep through winter, once a year

Are by our flower queen sent to visit here, That this fact may duly flout us, Gardens can look fair without us.

"A very little time we have to play,
Then must we go, oh, very far away,
And sleep again for many a long, long day,

Till the glad birds sing above us,
And the warm sun comes to love us.

"Hark what the roses sing now, as we go ;"
Then very sweet and soft, and very low,
A dream of sound across the garden snow,
Came the chime of roses singing
To the lily-bell's faint ringing.

ROSES' SONG

"Softly sinking through the snow,
To our winter rest we go,
Underneath the snow to house
Till the birds be in the boughs,
And the boughs with leaves be fair,
And the sun shine everywhere.