At first you'll joy to see the playful snow,
Like white moths trembling on the tropic air,
Or waters of the hills that softly flow
Gracefully falling down a shining stair.

And when the fields and streets are covered white
And the wind-worried void is chilly, raw,
Or underneath a spell of heat and light
The cheerless frozen spots begin to thaw,

Like me you'll long for home, where birds' glad song
Means flowering lanes and leas and spaces dry,
And tender thoughts and feelings fine and strong,

Your voice is the color of a robin's breast,
And there's a sweet sob in it like rain--still rain in the night.
Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest,
The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight
Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling throat.
I'm afraid of your eyes, they're so bold,
Searching me through, reading my thoughts, shining like gold.
But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the dew on the lips of the eucharis
Before the sun comes warm with his lover's kiss.

Who doubteth, when the morning star doth light
Her lamp of beauty, that the day is coming?
Or, where prime odours track the breezes’ flight,
That rare flowers in the vicinage are blooming?
Or, where the wild bees all about are humming,
That honey’s stored in some near cedar’s height?
Or, that the sea is heaving into sight
When more and more long surgy rolls come booming?
And surely, as the observer understands
What each of these foretokens in its kind,
Thy manhood’s mental amplitude expands

Cleft as the top of the inspired hill,
Struggles the soul of my divided quill,
Whilst this foot doth the watry mount aspire,
That Sinai's living and enlivening fire,
Behold my powers storm'd by a twisted light
O' th' Sun and his, first kindled his sight,
And my lost thoughts invoke the prince of day,
My right to th' spring of it and him do pray.

Say, happy youth, crown'd with a heav'nly ray
Of the first flame, and interwreathed bay,
Inform my soul in labour to begin,
Ios or Anthems, Poeans or a Hymne.

WITH margerain gentle,
   The flower of goodlihead,
Embroidered the mantle
   Is of your maidenhead.
Plainly I cannot glose;
   Ye be, as I divine,
The pretty primrose,
   The goodly columbine.

Benign, courteous, and meek,
   With wordes well devised;
In you, who list to seek,
   Be virtues well comprised.
With margerain gentle,
   The flower of goodlihead,
Embroidered the mantle

MERRY Margaret
   As midsummer flower,
   Gentle as falcon
   Or hawk of the tower:
With solace and gladness,
Much mirth and no madness,
All good and no badness;
   So joyously,
   So maidenly,
   So womanly
   Her demeaning
   In every thing,
   Far, far passing
   That I can indite,
   Or suffice to write
   Of Merry Margaret

My Muse in meads has spent her many hours
Sitting, and sorting several sorts of flowers,
To make for others garlands; and to set
On many a head here, many a coronet.
But amongst all encircled here, not one
Gave her a day of coronation;
Till you, sweet mistress, came and interwove
A laurel for her, ever young as Love.
You first of all crown'd her; she must, of due,
Render for that, a crown of life to you.

MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)


Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the movmg-picture play,
You have been my valentine.

Once a free-limbed page in hose,
Baby-Rosalind in flower,
Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
How our reverent passion rose,
How our fine desire you won.
Kitchen-wench another day,
Shapeless, wooden every way.
Next, a fairy from the sun.

Once you walked a grown-up strand
Fish-wife siren, full of lure,

IF in the summer of thy bright regard
For one brief season these poor Rhymes shall live
I ask no more, nor think my fate too hard
If other eyes but wintry looks should give;
Nor will I grieve though what I here have writ
O’er burdened Time should drop among the ways,
And to the unremembering dust commit
Beyond the praise and blame of other days:
The song doth pass, but I who sing, remain,
I pluck from Death’s own heart a life more deep,
And as the Spring, that dies not, in her train

I.

Sweet serene skye-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower;
From thy long clowdy bed
Shoot forth thy damaske head.

II.

New-startled blush of Flora!
The griefe of pale Aurora,
Who will contest no more,
Haste, haste, to strowe her floore.

III.

Vermilion ball, that's given
From lip to lip in Heaven;
Loves couches cover-led,
Haste, haste, to make her bed.

IV.

Dear offspring of pleas'd Venus,
And jollie plumpe Silenus;
Haste, haste, to decke the haire,