over
I can only _act_ a lover,
Now the mimic play begins
With its puppet joys and sins.

When the heart no longer feels,
And the blood with caution steals,
Then, ah! then--my heart, forgive!--
Then we dare begin to live.

Dipped in Stygian waves of pain,
We can never feel again;
Time may hurl his deadliest darts,
Love may practise all his arts;

Like some Balder, lo! we stand
Safe 'mid hurtling spear and brand,
Only Death--ah! sweet Death, throw!--
Holds the fatal mistletoe.

Let the young unconquered soul
Love the unit as the whole,
Let the young uncheated eye
Love the face fore-doomed to die:

But, my Celia, not for us
Pleasures half so hazardous;
Let us set our hearts on play,
'Tis, alas! the only way--

Make of life the jest it is,
Laugh and fool and (maybe!) kiss,
Never for a moment, dear,
Love so well to risk a fear.

Is not this, my Celia, say,
The only wise--and weary--way?

TIME'S MONOTONE

Autumn and Winter,
Summer and Spring--
Hath Time no other song to sing?
Weary we grow of the changeless tune--
June--December,
December--June!

Time, like a bird, hath but one song,
One way to build, like a bird hath he;
Thus hath he built so long, so long,
Thus hath he sung--Ah me!

Time, like a spider, knows, be sure,
One only wile, though he seems so wise:
Death is his web, and Love his lure,
And you and I his flies.

'Love!' he sings
In the morning clear,
'Love! Love! Love!'
And you never hear
How, under his breath,
He whispers, 'Death!
Death! Death!'

Yet Time--'tis the strangest thing of all--
Knoweth not the sense of the words he saith;
Eternity taught him his parrot-call
Of 'Love and Death.'

Year after year doth the old man climb
The mountainous knees of Eternity,
But Eternity telleth nothing to Time--
It may not be.

COR CORDIUM

O GOLDEN DAY! O SILVER NIGHT!

O golden day! O silver night!
That brought my own true love at last,
Ah, wilt thou drop from out our sight,
And drown within the past?

One wave, no more, in life's wide sea,
One little nameless crest of foam,
The day that gave her all to me
And brought us to our home.

Nay, rather as the morning grows
In flush, and gleam, and kingly ray,
While up the heaven the sun-god goes,
So shall ascend our day.

And when at last the long night nears,
And love grows angel in the gloam,
Nay, sweetheart, what of fears and