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

Oft in the night, from this lone room
I long to fly o’er land and sea,
To pierce the dark, dividing gloom,
And join myself to thee.

And thou to me wouldst gladly fly,
I know thee well, my own true wife!
We feel, that when we live not nigh,
We lose the crown of life.

Yet soon I hope, at dead of night,
To meet where all is strange beside,
And mid the train’s resounding flight
To have thee by my side.

Then shall I feel that thou art near,
Joined hand to hand and soul to soul;
Short will that happy night appear,

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,

1

Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.

In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.

Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands

I leave for thee, beloved one,
The home and friends of youth,
Trusting my hopes, my happiness,
Unto thy love and truth;
I leave for thee my girlhood's joys,
Its sunny, careless mirth,
To bear henceforth my share amid
The many cares of earth.

And yet, no wild regret I give
To all that now I leave,
The golden dreams, the flow'ry wreaths
That I no more may weave;
The future that before me lies
A dark and unknown sea --
Whate'er may be its storms or shoals,
I brave them all with thee!

Many the wonders I this day have seen:
The sun, when first he kissed away the tears
That filled the eyes of Morn;—the laurelled peers
Who from the feathery gold of evening lean;—
The ocean with its vastness, its blue green,
Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,
Its voice mysterious, which whoso hears
Must think on what will be, and what has been.
E'en now, dear George, while this for you I write,
Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping
So scantly, that it seems her bridal night,
And she her half-discovered revels keeping.

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour--

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;

You by the Arno shape your marble dream,
Under the cypress and the olive trees,
While I, this side the wild wind-beaten seas,
Unrestful by the Charles's placid stream,
Long once again to catch the golden gleam
Of Brunelleschi's dome, and lounge at ease
In those pleached gardens and fair galleries.
And yet perchance you envy me, and deem
My star the happier, since it holds me here.
Even so one time, beneath the cypresses,
My heart turned longingly across the sea
To these familiar fields and woodlands dear,

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:

591

To interrupt His Yellow Plan
The Sun does not allow
Caprices of the Atmosphere—
And even when the Snow

Heaves Balls of Specks, like Vicious Boy
Directly in His Eye—
Does not so much as turn His Head
Busy with Majesty—

'Tis His to stimulate the Earth—
And magnetize the Sea—
And bind Astronomy, in place,
Yet Any passing by

Would deem Ourselves—the busier
As the Minutest Bee
That rides—emits a Thunder—
A Bomb—to justify—