Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!

—Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces,--
Roses, you are not so fair after all!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

TO MARGUERITE

YES: in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour;

O then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent!
For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent.

Now round us spreads the watery plain-
O might our marges meet again!

Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled;
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

SEPARATION

STOP! not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of time!

Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.

Longing

But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay-
If the loved form and the deep-cherished feature
Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away-

Me let no half-effaced memories cumber!

Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!
Deep be the darkness and still be the slumber-
Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!

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Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there: Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,

With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

LONGING

COME to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

DIVIDED

I

An empty sky, a world of heather,

Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom; We two among them wading together, Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,
Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet,
Crowds of larks at their matins hang over,
Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
"Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.

We two walk till the purple dieth,

And short dry grass under foot is brown,

But one little streak at a distance lieth

Green like a ribbon to prank the down.

II

Over the grass we stepped unto it,

And God He knoweth how blithe we were!

Never a voice to bid us eschew it:

Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!

Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen:
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.

Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,

Light was our talk as of fairy bells;

Fairy wedding-bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.

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Divided

Hand in hand, while the sun peered over,

We lapped the grass on that youngling spring;
Swept back its rushes, smoothed its clover,
And said, "Let us follow it westering."

III

A dappled sky, a world of meadows,
Circling above us the black rooks fly
Forward, backward; lo their dark shadows
Flit on the blossoming tapestry;—

Flit on the beck; for her long grass parteth

As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back: And, lo, the sun like a lover darteth

His flattering smile on her wayward track.

Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather
Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
On either brink we go hand in hand.

The beck grows wider, the hands must sever.
On either margin, our songs all done,
We move apart, while she singeth ever,

Taking the course of the stooping sun.

He prays, "Come over,"-I may not follow;
I cry, "Return,"-but he cannot come:
We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow;
Our hands are hanging, our hearts are numb.

IV

A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer,

A little talking of outward things:
The careless beck is a merry dancer,
Keeping sweet time to the air she sings.

A little pain when the beck grows wider;

'Cross to me now; for her wavelets swell"; "I may not cross,"-and the voice beside her Faintly reacheth, though heeded well.

No backward path; ah! no returning;

No second crossing that ripple's flow: "Come to me now, for the west is burning; Come ere it darkens."-"Ah, no! ah, no!"

Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching,—
The beck grows wider and swift and deep:
Passionate words as of one beseeching:

The loud beck drowns them: we walk, and weep.

V

A yellow moon in splendor drooping,

A tired queen with her state oppressed, Low by rushes and swordgrass stooping, Lics she soft on the waves at rest.

The desert heavens have felt her sadness;
Her earth will weep her some dewy tears;
The wild beck ends her tune of gladness,
And goeth stilly as soul that fears.

We two walk on in our grassy places

On either marge of the moonlit flood, With the moon's own sadness in our faces, Where joy is withered, blossom and bud.

VI

A shady freshness, chafers whirring;
A little piping of leaf-hid birds;
A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring;

A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds.

Bare grassy slopes, where kids are tethered,
Round valleys like nests all ferny-lined,
Round hills, with fluttering tree-tops feathered,
Swell high in their freckled robes behind.

A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver,
When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide;
A flashing edge for the milk-white river,
The beck, a river-with still sleek tide.