WOULD my Delia know if I love, let her take
My last thought at night, and the first when I wake;
With my prayers and best wishes preferr'd for her sake.

Let her guess what I muse on, when rambling alone
I stride o'er the stubble each day with my gun,
Never ready to shoot till the covey is flown.

Let her think what odd whimsies I have in my brain,
When I read one page over and over again,
And discover at last that I read it in vain.

Let her say why so fix'd and so steady my look,
Without ever regarding the person who spoke,

If I had words, if I had words
At least to vent my misery: —
But muter than the speechless herds
I have no voice wherewith to cry.
I have no strength to life my hands,
I have no heart to lift mine eye,
My soul is bound with brazen bands,
My soul is crushed and like to die.
My thoughts that wander here and there,
That wander wander listlessly,
Bring nothing back to cheer my care,
Nothing that I may live thereby.
My heart is broken in my breast,
My breath is but a broken sigh —
Oh if there be a land of rest

FAIR Amy of the terraced house,
Assist me to discover
Why you who would not hurt a mouse
Can torture so your lover.

You give your coffee to the cat,
You stroke the dog for coming,
And all your face grows kinder at
The little brown bee's humming.

But when he haunts your door . . . the town
Marks coming and marks going . . .
You seem to have stitched your eyelids down

They lie at rest asleep and dead,
The dew drops cool above their head,
They knew not when past summer fled —
Amen .

They lie at rest and quite forget
The hopes and fears that wring us yet;
Their eyes are set, their heart is set —
Amen .

They lie with us, yet gone away
Hear nothing that we sob or say
Beneath the thorn of wintry may —
Miserere .

Blessed are those who have not seen,
And who have yet believed;
The witness, here that has not been,
From heaven they have received.

Blessed are those who have not known
The things that stand before them,
And for a vision of their own
Can piously ignore them.

So let me think, whate'er befall,
That in the city duly,
Some men there are who love at all,
Some women who love truly;

And that upon two million odd
Transgressors in sad plenty,
Mercy will of a gracious God
Be shown — because of twenty.

I

Fast this Life of mine was dying,
Blind already and calm as death,
Snowflakes on her bosom lying
Scarcely heaving with her breath.

II

Love came by, and having known her
In a dream of fabled lands,
Gently stooped, and laid upon her
Mystic chrism of holy hands;

III

I wish we once were wedded, — then I must be true;
You should hold my will in yours to do or to undo:
But now I hate myself Eva when I look at you.

You have seen her hazel eyes, her warm dark skin,
Dark hair — but oh those hazel eyes a devil is dancing in: —
You my saint lead up to heaven she lures down to sin.

Listen Eva I repent, indeed I do my love:
How should I choose a peacock and leave and grieve a dove? —
If I could turn my back on her and follow you above.

No it's not her beauty bloomed like an autumn peach,

Is love so prone to change and rot
We are fain to rear forget-me-not
By measure in a garden plot? —

I love its growth at large and free
By untrod path and unlopped tree,
Or nodding by the unpruned hedge,
Or on the water's dangerous edge
Where flags and meadowsweet blow rank
With rushes on the quaking bank.

Love is not taught in learning's school,
Love is not parcelled out by rule;
Hath curb or call an answer got? —
So free must be forget-me-not.
Give me the flame no dampness dulls,
The passion of the instinctive pulse,

I wish I were a little bird
That out of sight doth soar,
I wish I were a song once heard
But often pondered o'er,
Or shadow of a lily stirred
By wind upon the floor,
Or echo of a loving word
Worth all that went before,
Or memory of a hope deferred
That springs again no more.

First printed in Blackwood's Magazine , May, 1847.
W E cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue outward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both
Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole