She left me marvelling why my soul Was sad that she was glad; At all the sadness in the sweet, The sweetness in the sad. Still, still I seemed to see her, still Look up with soft replies, And take the berries with her hand, And the love with her lovely eyes. Nothing begins, and nothing ends, That is not paid with moan; For we are born in others' pain, And perish in our own. THE POPPY To MONICA Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there: Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came, And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame. With burnt mouth red like a lion's it drank The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank, And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine When the eastern conduits ran with wine; Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss, And hot as a swinkèd gipsy is, And drowsed in sleepy savageries, With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss. A child and man paced side by side, Treading the skirts of eventide; But between the clasp of his hand and hers Lay, felt not, twenty withered years. She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair, And saw the sleeping gipsy there; And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim, With--"Keep it, long as you live!"--to him. And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres, Trembled up from a bath of tears; And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart, Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart. For _he_ saw what she did not see, That--as kindled by its own fervency-- The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly: And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers He knew the twenty withered years-- No flower, but twenty shrivelled years. "Was never such thing until this hour," Low to his heart he said; "the flower Of sleep brings wakening to me, And of oblivion memory. "Was never this thing to me," he said, "Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!" And again to his own heart very low: "O child! I love, for I love and know; "But you, who love nor know at all The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall, Where some rise early, few sit long: In how differing accents hear the throng His great Pentecostal tongue; "Who know not love from amity, Nor my reported self from me; A fair fit gift is this, meseems, You give--this withering flower of dreams. "O frankly fickle, and fickly true, Do you know what the days will do to you? To your Love and you what the days will do, O frankly fickle, and fickly true? "You have loved me, Fair, three lives--or days: 'Twill pass with the passing of my face. But where _I_ go, your face goes too, To watch lest I play false to you.