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
Ón 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.

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 other's pain,
And perish in our own.

Francis Thompson

CCCXCVIII

TO THE SINKING SUN

How graciously thou wear'st the yoke
Of use that does not fail!

The grasses, like an anchored smoke,
Ride in the bending gale;

This knoll is snowed with blosmy manna,
And fire-dropt as a seraph's mail.

Here every eve thou stretchest out
Untarnishable wing,

And marvellously bring'st about
Newly an olden thing;

Nor ever through like-ordered heaven

Moves largely thy grave progressing.

There every eve thou goest down
Behind the self-same hill,

Nor ever twice alike go'st down
Behind the self-same hill;

Nor like-ways is one flame-sopped flower
Possessed with glory past its will.

Not twice alike! I am not blind,
My sight is live to see;
And yet I do complain of thy
Weary variety.

O Sun! I ask thee less or more,
Change not at all, or utterly!
O give me unprevisioned new,
Or give to change reprieve!
For new in one is olden too,
That I for sameness grieve.
O flowers! O grasses! be but once
The grass and flower of yester-eve!

Wonder and sadness are the lot

Of change: thou yield'st mine eyes
Grief of vicissitude, but not
Its penetrant surprise.
Immutability mutable

Burthens my spirit and the skies.

O altered joy, all joyed of yore
Plodding in unconned ways!

O grief grieved out, and yet once more
A dull, new, staled amaze!

I dream, and all was dreamed before,
Or dream I so? the dreamer says.

Francis Thompson

CCCXCIX
SONG

I came to the doors of the House of Love
And knocked as the starry night went by;

And my true love cried "Who knocks?" and I said "It is I."

And Love looked down from a lattice above

Where the roses were dry as the lips of the dead; "There is not room in the House of Love

For you both," he said.

I plucked a leaf from the porch and crept
Away through a desert of scoffs and scorns
To a lonely place where I prayed and wept
And wore me a crown of thorns.

I came once more to the House of Love

And knocked, ah, softly and wistfully,

And my true love cried "Who knocks?" and I said "None now but thee."

And the great doors opened wide apart

And a voice rang out from a glory of light, "Make room, make room for a faithful heart In the House of Love, to-night."

Alfred Noyes

CCCC

LOVE'S ROSARY

All day I tell my rosary

For now my love's away:
To-morrow he shall come to me
About the break of day;
A rosary of twenty hours,
And then a rose of May;
A rosary of fettered flowers,
And then a holy-day.

All day I tell my rosary,

My rosary of hours:

And here's a flower of memory,

And here's a hope of flowers,

And here's an hour that yearns with pain

For old forgotten years,

An hour of loss, an hour of gain,

And then a shower of tears.

All day I tell my rosary,
Because my love's away;

And never a whisper comes to me,
And never a word to say;

But, if it's parting more endears,
God bring him back, I pray;

Or my heart will break in the darkness
Before the break of day.

All day I tell my rosary

My rosary of hours,

Until an hour shall bring to me

The hope of all the flowers.

I tell my rosary of hours,

For O,

my love's away;

And a dream may bring him back to me

About the break of day.

Alfred Noyes

CCCCI

SONG OF HANRAHAN THE RED

Oh, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood, The song is in my blood, night and day;

We will pluck a scented petal from the Rose upon the Rood

Where Love lies bleeding on the way;

We will listen to the linnet and watch the waters leap,

When the clouds go dreaming by,

And under the wild roses and the stars we will sleep And wander on together, you and I.

We shall understand the mystery that none has understood,

We shall know why the leafy gloom is green; Oh, Death will never find us in the heart of the wood When we see what the stars have seen;

We have heard the hidden song of the soft dews falling

At the end of the last dark sky,

Where all the sorrows of the world are calling,

We must wander on together, you and I.