God gave us bodies for suffering and for strangers, To have their will of. We divided waken To find the heart that won through all its dangers By the stained body at the dawn forsaken. We said of love “The body, and its langours Are but a little thing, though sweet. Unshaken Behold the heart!” Fools! Who forgot the angers Of blood despised and the heart overtaken By the gross hands of lust even at the portal Of bliss. And not for any tears is altered Love thus betrayed, yet though betrayed, immortal, Struggling for ever and for ever haltered. God gave us bodies; let them write in heaven “Love we forgive, but God is not forgiven.” RONSARD AND HELENE. You sang, Ronsard, in your imperial lay Hélène, and sang as only you would dare That she would cry, in reading, old and grey “Ronsard sang this of me when I was fair.” That was youth spoke, Ronsard, who will not stay To wonder if his own divine despair May not with losing loveliness outweigh Kisses, that given, melt upon the air. If youth but knew, Ronsard! The things that seem Would he not barter for the things that are, And leave his mistress to embrace her dream Exchange her lips for her lost beauty’s star? Losing Hélène youth finds the lovelier truth, If youth but knew! But then he were not youth. THE DRIFT OF THE LUTE. Love, lay aside your lute and leave the roses That with the bays are twined. No time for sweeping The strings now in the hush of the heart, nor reaping Summer’s fulfilment. For the daylight closes With laying on of hands and the heart shriven, And mystical washing away of sorrow, So there is neither yesterday nor morrow But quiet and the world to healing given. And if such peace o’er lute and roses drifted Would seem to beggar love of coronation Thus in the darkness fallen on an ending, See! Than the sun, whose golden hands were lifted In heaven, now cloaked, more lovely seek her station, The moon consummate in her place ascending. LOVE AND BEAUTY. Even tho’ love were done, shall we complain If in the world there’s hidden loveliness Born of that love, and not a lost caress But makes us poorer to the common gain? This beauty may adorn with deeper stain The cool first jonquil, or with light redress The vision of a star, and thus confess That love, though lost, is never lost in vain. And if for others we have lit this flame, While us the gloom invests of dying embers, Being so separate, your heart remembers, As mine, the world before the wonder came, For that sweet change we spent our hearts in heaven, Thus briefly won, thus lost, and thus forgiven. WAR VERSE. V. D. F. (_Ave atque Vale._)