YOUR ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
(If our loves remain)
In an English lane,

By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
Making love, say,-
The happier they!

Draw yourself up from the light of the moon,

And let them pass, as they will too soon.
With the beanflowers' boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
And come again to the land of lands)-
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree-'t is a cypress---
stands

By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Rough iron-spiked,ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands

To the water's edge. For, what expands Before the house, but the great opaque Blue breadth of sea without a break? While, in the house, forever crumbles Some fragment of the frescoed walls, From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,

And says there 's news to-day-the king

I have but to be by thee, and thy hand Will never let mine go, nor heart withstand

The beating of my heart to reach its

place.

When shall I look for thee and feel thee

gone?

When cry for the old comfort and find

none?

Never, I know! Thy soul is in thy face.

Oh, I should fade-'t is willed so! Might I save,

Gladly I would, whatever beauty gave

Joy to thy sense, for that was precious too.

It is not to be granted. But the soul Whence the love comes, all ravage leaves that whole;

Vainly the flesh fades; soul makes all things new.

It would not be because my eye grew dim

Thou couldst not find the love there, thanks to Him

Who never is dishonored in the spark He gave us from his fire of fires and bade

Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid

While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark.

So, how thou wouldst be perfect, white and clean

Outside as inside, soul and soul's de

mesne

Alike, this body given to show it by! Oh, three-parts through the worst of life's abyss,

What plaudits from the next world after this,

Couldst thou repeat a stroke and gain the sky!

And is it not the bitterer to think That disengage our hands and thou wilt sink

Although thy love was love in very deed ?

I know that nature! Pass a festive day, Thou dost not throw its relic-flower away Nor bid its music's loitering echo speed.

Thou let'st the stranger's glove lie where it fell;

If old things remain old things all is well,

For thou art grateful as becomes man best:

And hadst thou only heard me play one tune,

Or viewed me from a window, not so

soon

With thee would such things fade as with the rest.

I seem to see! We meet and part; 't is brief;

The book I opened keeps a folded leaf, The very chair I sat on, breaks the rank;

That is a portrait of me on the wallThree lines, my face comes at so slight a call:

And for all this, one little hour to thank!

But now, because the hour through years was fixed,

Because our inmost beings met and mixed,

Because thou once hast loved me-wilt

thou dare

Say to thy soul and Who may list beside, "Therefore she is immortally my bride; Chance cannot change my love, nor time impair.

"So, what if in the dusk of life that's

left,

I, a tired traveller of my sun bereft, Look from my path when, mimicking the same,

The firefly glimpses past me, come and gone?

-Where was it till the sunset? Where

anon

It will be at the sunrise! What's to blame?

Is it so helpful to thee? Canst thou take

The mimic up, nor, for the true thing's sake,

Put gently by such efforts at a beam? Is the remainder of the way so long, Thou need'st the little solace, thou the strong?

Watch out thy watch, let weak ones doze and dream!

Ah, but the fresher faces! "Is it true," Thou 'It ask, "some eyes are beautiful and new?

Some hair,-how can one choose but grasp such wealth?

And if a man would press his lips to lips Fresh as the wilding hedge-rose-cup there slips

The dewdrop out of, must it be by stealth?

"It cannot change the love still kept for Her,

More than if such a picture I prefer Passing a day with, to a room's bare

side :

Seeing thy face on those four sides of it The better that they are so blank, I

know!

Why, time was what I wanted, to turn o'er

Within my mind each look, get more and more

By heart each word, too much to learn

at first:

And join thee all the fitter for the pause 'Neath the low doorway's lintel. That

were cause

For lingering, though thou calledst, if I durst!

And yet thou art the nobler of us two: What dare I dream of, that thou canst not do,

Outstripping my ten small steps with one stride?

I'll say then, here's a trial and a task-Is it to bear?-if easy, I 'll not ask :

Though love fail, I can trust on in thy pride.

Pride? when those eyes forestall the life behind

The death I have to go through !—when I find,

Now that I want thy help most, all

of thee! What did I fear? Thy love shall hold me fast Until the little minute's sleep is past And I wake saved.-And yet it will not be! 1855.

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA

I WONDER do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the laud,
This morn of Rome and May ?

For me, I touched a thought, I know
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork's
cleft,

Some old tomb's ruin; yonder weed Took up the floating weft,

While I am I, and you are you,

So long as the world contains us both, Me the loving and you the loth, While the one eludes, must the other pursue.

My life is a fault at last, I fear:

It seems too much like a fate, indeed! Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.

But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain,

To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, And baffled, get up and begin again,So the chase takes up one's life that's all.