AMANS

No longer do I know of good or bad, I have forgotten that I once was glad; I do but chase a dream that I have had.

Let me depart, since ye are happy here.

PUELLae

Stay! take one image for thy dreamful night; Come, look at her, who in the world's despite Weeps for delaying love and lost delight.

Abide! abide! for we are happy here.

AMANS

Mock me not till to-morrow. Mock the dead, They will not heed it, or turn round the head, To note who faithless are, and who are wed.

Let me depart, since ye are happy here.

PUELLae

We mock thee not. Hast thou not heard of those Whose faithful love the loved heart holds so close, That death must wait till one word lets it loose?

Abide! abide! for we are happy here.

AMANS

I hear you not: the wind from off the waste Sighs like a song that bids me make good haste The wave of sweet forgetfulness to taste.

Let me depart, since ye are happy here.

PUELLae

Come back! like such a singer is the wind, As to a sad tune sings fair words and kind, That he with happy tears all eyes may blind!

Abide! abide! for we are happy here.

AMANS

Did I not hear her sweet voice cry from far, That o'er the lonely waste fair fields there are, Fair days that know not any change or care?

Let me depart, since ye are happy here.

PUELLae

Oh, no! not far thou heardest her, but nigh; Nigh, 'twixt the waste's edge and the darkling sky.

Turn back again, too soon it is to die.

Abide! a little while be happy here.

AMANS

How with the lapse of lone years could I strive, And can I die now that thou biddest live?

What joy this s.p.a.ce 'twixt birth and death can give.

Can we depart, who are so happy here?

A GARDEN BY THE SEA

I know a little garden-close, Set thick with lily and red rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy morn to dewy night, And have one with me wandering.

And though within it no birds sing, And though no pillared house is there, And though the apple-boughs are bare Of fruit and blossom, would to G.o.d Her feet upon the green gra.s.s trod, And I beheld them as before.

There comes a murmur from the sh.o.r.e, And in the close two fair streams are, Drawn from the purple hills afar, Drawn down unto the restless sea: Dark hills whose heath-bloom feeds no bee, Dark sh.o.r.e no ship has ever seen, Tormented by the billows green Whose murmur comes unceasingly Unto the place for which I cry.

For which I cry both day and night, For which I let slip all delight, Whereby I grow both deaf and blind, Careless to win, unskilled to find, And quick to lose what all men seek.

Yet tottering as I am and weak, Still have I left a little breath To seek within the jaws of death An entrance to that happy place, To seek the unforgotten face, Once seen, once kissed, once reft from me Anigh the murmuring of the sea.

MOTHER AND SON

Now sleeps the land of houses, and dead night holds the street, And there thou liest, my baby, and sleepest soft and sweet; My man is away for awhile, but safe and alone we lie, And none heareth thy breath but thy mother, and the moon looking down from the sky On the weary waste of the town, as it looked on the gra.s.s-edged road Still warm with yesterday's sun, when I left my old abode; Hand in hand with my love, that night of all nights in the year; When the river of love o'erflowed and drowned all doubt and fear, And we two were alone in the world, and once if never again, We knew of the secret of earth and the tale of its labour and pain.

Lo amidst London I lift thee, and how little and light thou art, And thou without hope or fear thou fear and hope of my heart!

Lo here thy body beginning, O son, and thy soul and thy life; But how will it be if thou livest, and enterest into the strife, And in love we dwell together when the man is grown in thee, When thy sweet speech I shall hearken, and yet 'twixt thee and me Shall rise that wall of distance, that round each one doth grow, And maketh it hard and bitter each other's thought to know.

Now, therefore, while yet thou art little and hast no thought of thine own, I will tell thee a word of the world; of the hope whence thou hast grown; Of the love that once begat thee, of the sorrow that hath made Thy little heart of hunger, and thy hands on my bosom laid.

Then mayst thou remember hereafter, as whiles when people say All this hath happened before in the life of another day; So mayst thou dimly remember this tale of thy mother's voice, As oft in the calm of dawning I have heard the birds rejoice, As oft I have heard the storm-wind go moaning through the wood; And I knew that earth was speaking, and the mother's voice was good.

Now, to thee alone will I tell it that thy mother's body is fair, In the guise of the country maidens Who play with the sun and the air; Who have stood in the row of the reapers in the August afternoon, Who have sat by the frozen water in the high day of the moon, When the lights of the Christmas feasting were dead in the house on the hill, And the wild geese gone to the salt-marsh had left the winter still.

Yea, I am fair, my firstling; if thou couldst but remember me!