Cyrano-like, here's my refrain:
I fight you, darling, for your heart.

If compliments I interlard
Twixt feint and lunge, you'll not complain
Lacking your eyes, the night's un-starred,
The rose is beautiful in vain,
In vain smells sweet--Rose-in-the-Brain,
Dizzying the world--a touch! sweet smart!--
Only the envoi doth remain:
I fight you, darling, for your heart.

ENVOI

Princess, I'm yours; the rose-red rain
Pours from my side--but see! I dart
Within your guard--poor pretty stain!
I fight you, darling, for your heart.

SORCERY

Face with the forest eyes,
And the wayward wild-wood hair,
How shall a man be wise,
When a girl's so fair;
How, with her face once seen,
Shall life be as it has been,
This many a year?

Beautiful fearful thing!
You undulant sorcery!
I dare not hear you sing,
Dance not for me;
The whiteness of your breast,
Divinely manifest
I must not see.

Too late, thou luring child,
Moon matches little moon;
I must not be beguiled,
With the honied tune:
Yet O to lay my head
Twixt moon and moon!
'Twas so my sad heart said,
Only last June.

THE DRYAD

My dryad hath her hiding place
Among ten thousand trees.
She flies to cover
At step of a lover,
And where to find her lovely face
Only the woodland bees
Ever discover,
Bringing her honey
From meadows sunny,
Cowslip and clover.

Vainly on beech and oak I knock
Amid the silent boughs;
Then hear her laughter,
The moment after,
Making of me her laughing-stock
Within her hidden house.

The young moon with her wand of pearl
Taps on her hidden door,
Bids her beauty flower
In that woodland bower,
All white like a mortal girl,
With moonshine hallowed o'er.

Yet were there thrice ten thousand trees
To hide her face from me,
Not all her fleeing
Should 'scape my seeing,
Nor all her ambushed sorceries
Secure concealment be
For her bright being.

Yea! should she by the laddered pine
Steal to the stars on high,
Her fairy whiteness,
Hidden in brightness,
Her hiding-place would so out-shine
The constellated sky,
She could not 'scape the eye
Of my pursuing,
Nor her fawn-foot lightness
Out-speed my wooing.

MAY IS BACK

May is back, and You and I