We shall feel her joy-winged sigh, When she hears the Summer's cry: We shall droop and die of grieving, When our lovely Spring is leaving. LITTONDALE. LILIES When I am old, so very old That all my own have passed away, And I await Life's evening-gold, A little figure, lone and grey; I'll keep a garden, green and bright, Then I'll forget approaching night. A garden dear--with quaint-cut yews-- Bound by a hedge of bronzing beech, And just before them I shall choose The great white lilies that beseech, With upturned faces, pure and staid, Love from the little Mother Maid. And close beside the lichened wall, Lilies, aflame like scarlet fire, Shall watch the little swallows fall From out their nestlet in the byre; And where the path strays to the stream, The golden ones shall dying dream. Then where the garden greets the wood, A host of lily-bells shall ring Their message clear that "all is good Where God reigns over everything." My garden-beauty, all shall see, Is mirrored from Eternity. A GARDEN IN AIREDALE. THE PEAR-TREE A rain of petals the pear-trees give, As a pearly toll for the right to live. Fragile petals that gently fall, Like tears down the face of the old grey wall. Around the bole, where the grasses grow, Is a circle white as of melting snow. An enchanted circle, flower-entwined, Where hyacinth fingers the grasses bind. The youngling thrushes soon learn how To alight and shake the flowers from each bough. The swallows tell their babes such tales! That the tree is a ship with flower-white sails, Anchored to Earth in the harbour of May; But one moonless night she will sail away, And a prim green tree will take the place Of the phantom ship with its sails of lace. Then in autumn the Orchardist Time will come, And bear the fruit away to his home. And later on he will heave a sigh, That the little white tree some day must die. So I write this verse to the little Pear-tree, That both be remembered--it and me. COXWOLD. BEGGAR'S GOLD I