There is no day for thee, my soul, like this, No spring of lovely words. Nay, even the kiss Of mortal love that maketh man divine This light cannot outshine: Nay, even poets, they whose frail hands catch The shadow of vanishing beauty, may not match This leafy ecstasy. Sweet words may cull Such magical beauty as time may not destroy; But we, alas, are not more beautiful: We cannot flower in beauty as in joy. We sing, our mused words are sped, and then Poets are only men Who age, and toil, and sicken.... This maim'd tree May stand in leaf when I have ceased to be. * * * * * WILLIAM H. DAVIES LOVELY DAMES Few are my books, but my small few have told Of many a lovely dame that lived of old; And they have made me see those fatal charms Of Helen, which brought Troy so many harms; And lovely Venus, when she stood so white Close to her husband's forge in its red light. I have seen Dian's beauty in my dreams, When she had trained her looks in all the streams She crossed to Latmos and Endymion; And Cleopatra's eyes, that hour they shone The brighter for a pearl she drank to prove How poor it was compared to her rich love: But when I look on thee, love, thou dost give Substance to those fine ghosts, and make them live. WHEN YON FULL MOON When yon full moon's with her white fleet of stars, And but one bird makes music in the grove; When you and I are breathing side by side, Where our two bodies make one shadow, love; Not for her beauty will I praise the moon, But that she lights thy purer face and throat; The only praise I'll give the nightingale Is that she draws from thee a richer note. For, blinded with thy beauty, I am filled, Like Saul of Tarsus, with a greater light; When he had heard that warning voice in Heaven, And lost his eyes to find a deeper sight. Come, let us sit in that deep silence then, Launched on love's rapids, with our passions proud That makes all music hollow--though the lark Raves in his windy heights above a cloud. ON HEARING MRS. WOODHOUSE PLAY THE HARPSICHORD We poets pride ourselves on what We feel, and not what we achieve; The world may call our children fools, Enough for us that we conceive. A little wren that loves the grass Can be as proud as any lark That tumbles in a cloudless sky, Up near the sun, till he becomes The apple of that shining eye. So, lady, I would never dare To hear your music ev'ry day; With those great bursts that send my nerves In waves to pound my heart away; And those small notes that run like mice Bewitched by light; else on those keys-- My tombs of song--you should engrave: 'My music, stronger than his own, Has made this poet my dumb slave.' BIRDS When our two souls have left this mortal clay And, seeking mine, you think that mine is lost-- Look for me first in that Elysian glade Where Lesbia is, for whom the birds sing most.