But why is your head so low, sweet heart, And why are your eyes overcast? Are they clouded because you know we must part, Do you think this embrace is our last? Then kiss me again, and again, and again, Look up as you bid me good-bye! For your face is too dear for the stain of a tear, And your smile is the sun in my sky. THE BLACK BIRDS I Once, only once, I saw it clear,-- That Eden every human heart has dreamed A hundred times, but always far away! Ah, well do I remember how it seemed, Through the still atmosphere Of that enchanted day, To lie wide open to my weary feet: A little land of love and joy and rest, With meadows of soft green, Rosy with cyclamen, and sweet With delicate breath of violets unseen,-- And, tranquil 'mid the bloom As if it waited for a coming guest, A little house of peace and joy and love Was nested like a snow-white dove From the rough mountain where I stood, Homesick for happiness, Only a narrow valley and a darkling wood To cross, and then the long distress Of solitude would be forever past,-- I should be home at last. But not too soon! oh, let me linger here And feed my eyes, hungry with sorrow, On all this loveliness, so near, And mine to-morrow! Then, from the wood, across the silvery blue, A dark bird flew, Silent, with sable wings. Close in his wake another came,-- Fragments of midnight floating through The sunset flame,-- Another and another, weaving rings Of blackness on the primrose sky,-- Another, and another, look, a score, A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavily From that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood,-- They boiled into the lucid air Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair! And more, and more, and ever more, The numberless, ill-omened brood, Flapping their ragged plumes, Possessed the landscape and the evening light With menaces and glooms. Oh, dark, dark, dark they hovered o'er the place Where once I saw the little house so white Amid the flowers, covering every trace Of beauty from my troubled sight,-- And suddenly it was night! II