Listen and hear the happy wind Whisper and lightly pass: 'Your love is sweet as hawthorn is, Your hope green as the grass. 'The hawthorn's faint and quickly gone, The grass in autumn dies; Put by your life, and see the spring With everlasting eyes.' PAST AND PRESENT Daisies are over Nyren, and Hambledon Hardly remembers any summer gone: And never again the Kentish elms shall see Mynn, or Fuller Pilch, or Colin Blythe. --Nor shall I see them, unless perhaps a ghost Watching the elder ghosts beyond the moon. But here in common sunshine I have seen George Hirst, not yet a ghost, substantial, His off-drives mellow as brown ale, and crisp Merry late cuts, and brave Chaucerian pulls; Waddington's fury and the patience of Dipper; And twenty easy artful overs of Rhodes, So many stanzas of the Faerie Queen. THE AUDIT Mere living wears the most of life away: Even the lilies take thought for many things, For frost in April and for drought in May, And from no careless heart the skylark sings. Those cheap utilities of rain and sun Describe the foolish circle of our years, Until death takes us, doing all undone, And there's an end at last to hopes and fears. Though song be hollow and no dreams come true, Still songs and dreams are better than the truth: But there's so much to get, so much to do, Mary must drudge like Martha, dainty Ruth Forget the morning music in the corn, And Rachel grudge when Leah's boys are born. THE APPLE TREE Secret and wise as nature, like the wind Melancholy or light-hearted without reason, And like the waxing or the waning moon Ever pale and lovely: you are like these Because you are free and live by your own law; While I, desiring life and half alive, Dream, hope, regret and fear and blunder on. Your beauty is your life and my content, And I will liken you to an apple-tree, Mary and Margaret playing under the branches, And everywhere soft shadows like your eyes, And scattered blossom like your little smiles. HER NEW-YEAR POSY When I seek the world through For images of you, Though apple-blossom is glad And the lily stately-sad, Gilliflowers kind of breath, Rosemary true till death; Though the wind can stir the grass To memories as you pass. And the soft-singing streams Are music like your dreams; Though constant stars embrace The quiet of your face, Your smile lights up sunrise, And evening's in your eyes-- Each so shadows its part, All cannot show your heart; And weighing the beauty of earth I see it so little worth, When reckoned beside you, That I hold heaven for true --But all my heaven is you. COUNTING SHEEP