, or to urge anew
A claim contested. For my days are few;
My days, I think, are few upon the earth
Since I must shun the joys I would pursue.

iii.

I am not worthy of the Heaven I name
When I name thee; and yet to win the same
Is still my dream. I strive as best I can
To live uprightly on the vaunted plan
Of old-world sages. But I strive not well;
And thoughts conflicting which I cannot quell
Make me despondent; and I quake thereat,
As at the shuddering of a doomsday bell.

iv.

To die for thee were more than my desert;
To live for thee to keep thee out of hurt
And, like a slave, to wait upon thy will
Were more than fame. And lo! I nourish still
A sense of calm to feel that thou, at least,
Art sorrow-free and honor'd at the feast
Which Nature spreads for all contented minds;
And that for thee its splendours have increased.

v.

I stand alone. I stand beneath the trees,
I guess their thoughts; I hear them to the breeze
Say tender nothings; and I dream the while
Of thy white arms, and thy remember'd smile,
When, in a spot like this, a year a-gone,
I saw thee stoop to pluck from off the lawn
A wounded bird that peer'd into thy face
As if it took thee for the nymph of dawn!

vi.

Oh, can it be, as friends of thine affirm
That thou'rt a fairy,--that, from term to term,
Month after month, belov'd of all good things,
Thou'rt seen in forests and in meadow rings
Girt for the dance? or like an Oread queen
Array'd for council? For the woods convene
Their dryad forces when the nights are clear,
And nymphs and fawns carouse upon the green.

vii.

The crescent moon, the Argosy of heaven,
Veers for the west across the Pleiads seven,
And, out beyond the ridge of Charles's Wain,
It seems to come to mooring on the main
Of that deep sky, as if awaiting there
An angel-guest with sunlight in her hair,
A seraph's cousin, or the foster-child
Of some centurion of the upper air.

viii.

Is it thy soul? Has Cynthia call'd for thee
In her white boat, to take thee o'er the sea
Where suns and stars and constellations bright
Are isles of glory,--where a seraph's right
Surpasses mine, and makes me seem indeed
A base intruder, with a coward's creed
And not an angel's, though a Christian born
And pledged always to serve thee at thy need?

ix.

Thou'rt sleeping now; and in thy snowy rest,--
In that seclusion which is like a nest
For blameless human maids beheld of those
Wh