SWINBURNE.

BEFORE PARTING.

A MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time,
Cold, sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam.
Where the wine's heart has burst,

Nor feel the latter kisses like the first.

Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to change the bitterness of it-
The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet-

To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.

And yet, who knows what end the scythèd wheat
Makes of its foolish poppies' mouths of red?
These were not sown; these are not harvested;
They grow a month, and are cast under feet,
And none has care thereof,

As none has care of a divided love.

I know each shadow of your lips by rote,
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
The fashion of fair temples tremulous

With tender blood, and colour of your throat:
I know not how love is gone out of this,
Seeing that all was his.

Love's likeness there endures upon all these-
But out of these one shall not gather love.

Day hath not strength, nor the night shade enough
To make love whole, and fill his lips with ease,
As some bee-builded cell

Feels at filled lips the honey swell.

I know not how this last month leaves your hair
Less full of purple colour and hid spice,

And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
Is mixed with meaner shadows and waste care;
And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
Worth patience to regret.

STEDMAN.

THE DOOR-STEP.

THE Conference-meeting through at last,
We boys around the vestry waited
To see the girls come tripping past
Like snow-birds willing to be mated.

Not braver he that leaps the wall
By level musket-flashes litten
Than I, who stepped before them all
Who longed to see me get the mitten.

But no; she blushed and took my arm!
We let the old folks have the highway,
And started toward the Maple Farm
Along a kind of lovers' by-way.

I can't remember what we said

'Twas nothing worth a song or storyYet that rude path by which we sped Seemed all transformed and in a glory.

The snow was crisp beneath our feet,

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;

By hood and tippet sheltered sweet,

Her face with youth and health was beaming.

The little hand outside her muff

(Oh, sculptor, if you could but mould it!)

So lightly touched my jacket-cuff,

To keep it warm I had to hold it.

To have her with me there alone

'Twas love, and fear, and triumph blended. At last we reached the foot-worn stone Where that delicious journey ended.

The old folks, too, were almost home;
Her dimpled hand the latches fingered;
We heard the voices nearer come,

Yet on the door-step still we lingered.

She shook her ringlets from her hood,
And with a "Thank you, Ned," dissembled;

But yet I knew she understood

With what a daring wish I trembled.

A cloud passed kindly overhead,

The moon was slyly peeping through it, Yet hid its face, as if it said,

"Come, now or never-do it! do it!"

My lips till then had only known

The kiss of mother and of sister,

But somehow, full upon her own

Sweet, rosy, darling mouth, I kissed her!

Perhaps 'twas boyish love, yet still,
Oh listless woman, weary lover,

To feel once more that fresh, wild thrill,
I'd give but who can live youth over?

"DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW."

WAKING, I have been nigh to DeathHave felt the chillness of his breath Whiten my cheek and numb my heart, And wondered why he stayed his dartYet quailed not, but could meet him so, As any lesser friend or foe.

But sleeping, in the dreams of night
His phantom stifles me with fright.
O God! what frozen horrors fall
Upon me with his visioned pall—
The movelessness, the unknown dread,
Fair life to pulseless silence wed!

And is the grave so darkly deep,
So hopeless, as it seems in sleep?
Can our sweet selves the coffin hold
So dumb within its crumbling mould?
And is the shroud so dank and drear
A garb-the noisome worm so near?

Where, then, is Heaven's mercy fled,
To quite forget the voiceless dead?