ht hushed
Life's busy stir, and left us two alone,
Will you remember? or, when dawn creeps in,
And you bend o'er another's pillowed head,
Seeing sleep's loosened hair about her face,
Until her low love-laughter welcomes you,
Will you, down-gazing at her waking eyes,
Forget?
So have I loved you, my Admetus,
I thank the cruel fates who clip my life
To lengthen yours, they tarry not for age
To dim my eye and blanch my cheek, but now
Take me, while my lips are sweet to you
And youth hides yet amid this hair of mine,
Brown in the shadow, golden in the light.
Bend down and kiss me, dying for your sake,
Not gratefully, but sadly, love's farewell;
And if the flowering year's oblivion
Lend a new passion to thy life, far down
In the dim Stygian shadows wandering,
I will not know, but still will cherish there,
Where no change comes, thy love upon my lips.

Reminiscence

We sang old love-songs on the way
In sad and merry snatches,
Your fingers o'er the strings astray
Strumming the random catches.

And ever, as the skiff plied on
Among the trailing willows,
Trekking the darker deeps to shun
The gleaming sandy shallows,

It seemed that we had, ages gone,
In some far summer weather,
When this same faery moonlight shone,
Sung these same songs together.

And every grassy cape we passed,
And every reedy island,
Even the bank'd cloud in the west
That loomed a sombre highland;

And you, with dewmist on your hair,
Crowned with a wreath of lilies,
Laughing like Lalage the fair
And tender-eyed like Phyllis:

I know not if 't were here at home,
By some old wizard's orders,
Or long ago in Crete or Rome
Or fair Provencal borders,

But now, as when a faint flame breaks
From out its smouldering embers,
My heart stirs in its sleep, and wakes,
And yet but half-remembers

That you and I some other time
Moved through this dream of glory,
Like lovers in an ancient rhyme,
A long-forgotten story.

Sonnet

I would that love were subject unto law!
Upon his person I should lay distraint
And force him thus to answer my complaint,
Which I, in well-considered counts, should draw.
Not free to fly, he n