romantic poems

Play it slowly, sing it lowly,
Old, familiar tune!
Once it ran in dance and dimple,
Like a brook in June;
Now it sobs along the measures
With a sound of tears;
Dear old voices echo through it,
Vanished with the years.

Ripple, ripple, goes the love-song,
Till in slowing time
Early sweetness grows completeness,
Floods its every rhyme.
Who together learn the music
Life and death unfold,
Know that love is but beginning
Until love is old.

Play it slowly, — it is holy

The poise of your small head, how proud it seems;
How sad your great dark eyes; and your mouth's bow
Has such a petulant disdainful pout,
As though it wearied of the ebb and flow
Of life within the soul where shapes of dreams
In endless long processions come and go,
And all the tumult of the world without.
Slowly about us the grave dusk is shed,
Behind us as we stand the frost-stung fire
Flames up and fills the room with dancing light,
Speech is not, but in silence I aspire
To praise you in a song unsung, unsaid,

O Prophet souls of all the years,
Bend o'er us from above;
Your far-off vision, toils and tears
Now to fulfilment move!

From tropic clime and zones of frost
They come, of every name, —
This, this our day of Pentecost,
The Spirit's tongue of flame!

The ancient barriers disappear:
Down bow the mountains high;
The sea-divided shores draw near
In world-wide unity.

One Life together we confess,
One all-indwelling Word,
One holy Call to righteousness
Within the silence heard:

Your delicate fingers on the keyboard make
The riotous notes beat swift as driving rain
With thunder in its pauses, and constrain
The spirit of music's inmost heart to awake.
Once more, once more, bid rise and swoon and ache
This song of Schumann's filled with tremulous pain,
Rapture and peace and joy that soars again
In fierce delight of love for love's own sake!

How vain, in sight of yours, seems this my art!
For could I play, or paint you, I could deem
My art not wholly worthless of its theme:

A LONG wet day and now, the twilight hour
Fine, but not golden, delicately gray …
We pace the garden path
Talking: and faint between the words we say
Fall troubled silences of pleasant sound …
I speak of love, and laugh!

The flowers stand drenched and bruised on either hand,
Only the leaves shine softly and seem glad …
And so the light grows less …
We turn: I take your hand … your lips look sad,
As though the rain had also hurt the flower
Of your mouth's loveliness …

Full of rain crystals, the asparagus

A MONG the garden walks of Proserpine,
Love, I will wait for you until your eyes
Are wearied of the sad monotonous skies,
And till you have drained the last cup of life's wine.
You bade me wait since to this love of mine
Might no responsive love within you rise.
I waited long: and now being one who dies,
Go hence to linger at a duskier shrine.

I had no will but yours; I gave to you
My life, albeit for all that I could do
You would not have me call you more than friend.
Of this I am glad — that while we drew life's breath

Ah ! you and I are not so far
From luckless fortune, now it seems,
Sweet lips, for all our foolish dreams
Of joy beneath a favouring star.

Joy was: and fortune changes. Chance
That brought us somehow heart to heart
Now bids us once touch lips and part.
I go to work and you to dance.

Ah, best and dearest love that yet
Made sweeter life's unfriended way,
It must be many a weary day
Ere you and I forget, forget!

Time conquers even a memory,
But this alone he cannot do —

O Heart of all the shining day,
The green earth's still Delight,
Thou Freshness in the morning wind,
Thou Silence of the night,
Thou Beauty of our temple-walls,
Thou Strength within the stone, —
What is it we can offer thee
That is not first thine own?

Old memories throng: we think of those
Awhile with us who trod,
Whose hands yet lift within our lives, —
We called them " Gift of God:"
And thine these shinings in our thought,
This eager, love-wrought hope,

The sultry heaviness of the burning night
Choked us with longing for the future day,
As bathed in sweat and feigning love we lay
Embraced beneath the jet of feeble light.

At length the birds began and their delight
Mocked us. They sang, while we could only pray
For respite as with infinite delay
The skies beyond the chimney-tops grew bright.

The shafts of sunlight entered and the rain
Of kisses ended with the need to feign,
Sundered the arms that strained, the lips that clove.

— O William! — she cried, — strew no blossoms of spring,
For the new — apparatus — might rust;
But say that a handful of shavings you 'll bring,
And linger to see me combust.

— Oh, promise me, love, by the fire-hole you 'll watch;
And when mourners and stokers convene,
You will see that they light me some solemn, slow match,
And warn them against kerosene.

— It would cheer me to know, ere these rude breezes waft
My essences far to the pole,
That one whom I love will look to the draught,