Or how the little flower he trod upon, The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold, Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun Content if once its leaves were aureoled. But surely it is something to have been The best belovèd for a little while, To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen His purple wings flit once across thy smile. Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars, Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars! QUIA MULTUM AMAVI DEAR Heart, I think the young impassioned priest When first he takes from out the hidden shrine His God imprisoned in the Eucharist, And eats the bread, and drinks the dreadful wine, Feels not such awful wonder as I felt When first my smitten eyes beat full on thee, And all night long before thy feet I knelt Till thou wert wearied of Idolatry. Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more, Through all those summer days of joy and rain, I had not now been sorrow’s heritor, Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain. Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal, Tread on my heels with all his retinue, I am most glad I loved thee—think of all The suns that go to make one speedwell blue! SILENTIUM AMORIS AS often-times the too resplendent sun Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won A single ballad from the nightingale, So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, And all my sweetest singing out of tune. And as at dawn across the level mead On wings impetuous some wind will come, And with its too harsh kisses break the reed Which was its only instrument of song, So my too stormy passions work me wrong, And for excess of Love my Love is dumb. But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung; Else it were better we should part, and go, Thou to some lips of sweeter melody, And I to nurse the barren memory Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung. HER VOICE THE wild bee reels from bough to bough With his furry coat and his gauzy wing, Now in a lily-cup, and now Setting a jacinth bell a-swing, In his wandering; Sit closer love: it was here I trow I made that vow, Swore that two lives should be like one As long as the sea-gull loved the sea, As long as the sunflower sought the sun,— It shall be, I said, for eternity ’Twixt you and me! Dear friend, those times are over and done; Love’s web is spun.