If the rose in meek duty May dedicate humbly To her grower the beauty Wherewith she is comely; If the mine to the miner The jewels that pined in it; Earth to diviner The springs he divined in it; To the grapes the wine-pitcher Their juice that was crushed in it; Viol to its witcher The music lay hushed in it; If the lips may pay Gladness In laughters she wakened, And the heart to its sadness Weeping unslakened; If the hid and sealed coffer Whose having not his is, To the loosers may proffer Their finding--here this is; Their lives if all livers To the Life of all living,-- To you, O dear givers, I give your own giving! DEDICATION OF "NEW POEMS" To COVENTRY PATMORE Lo, my book thinks to look Time's leaguer down Under the banner of your spread renown! Or, if these levies of impuissant rhyme Fall to the overthrow of assaulting Time, Yet this one page shall send oblivious shame, Armed with your crested and prevailing Name. Poems on Children DAISY Where the thistle lifts a purple crown Six foot out of the turf, And the harebell shakes on the windy hill-- O the breath of the distant surf!-- The hills look over on the South, And southward dreams the sea; And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand, Came innocence and she. Where 'mid the gorse the raspberry Red for the gatherer springs, Two children did we stray and talk Wise, idle, childish things. She listened with big-lipped surprise, Breast-deep 'mid flower and spine: Her skin was like a grape, whose veins Run snow instead of wine. She knew not those sweet words she spake, Nor knew her own sweet way; But there's never a bird so sweet a song Thronged in whose throat that day! Oh, there were flowers in Storrington On the turf and on the spray; But the sweetest flower on Sussex hills Was the Daisy-flower that day! Her beauty smoothed earth's furrowed face! She gave me tokens three:-- A look, a word of her winsome mouth, And a wild raspberry. A berry red, a guileless look, A still word,--strings of sand! And yet they made my wild, wild heart Fly down to her little hand. For, standing artless as the air, And candid as the skies, She took the berries with her hand, And the love with her sweet eyes. The fairest things have fleetest end: Their scent survives their close, But the rose's scent is bitterness To him that loved the rose! She looked a little wistfully, Then went her sunshine way:-- The sea's eye had a mist on it, And the leaves fell from the day. She went her unremembering way, She went, and left in me The pang of all the partings gone, And partings yet to be.