IRIS, HER BOOK. I PRAY thee by the soul of her that bore thee, For Iris had no mother to infold her, She had not learned the mystery of awaking Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token! Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken, Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken? She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies, And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances. Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing, Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her? What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her? Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor. And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven, And then Ah, God! But nay, it little matters: Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, If she had · Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore. Had the world nothing she might live to care for? She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming, Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher. Saying, unsaddened,- This shall soon be faded, This her poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and wintry hollies. In the strange crossing of uncertain chances, Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee, Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping, UNDER THE VIOLETS. HER hands are cold; her face is white; And lay her where the violets blow. But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes; A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies. And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on her mound. When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, For her the morning choir shall sing When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, |