CLXXII

THE GUEST

LIGHTS Love, the timorous bird, to dwell,
While summer smiles, a guest with you?
Be wise betimes and use him well,

And he will stay in winter too :
For you can have no sweeter thing
Within the heart's warm nest to sing.
The blue-plumed swallows fly away,
Ere autumn gilds a leaf; and then
Have wit to find, another day,

The little clay-built house again :
He will not know, a second spring,
His last year's nest, if Love take wing.

THOMAS ASHE.

CLXXIII

SEPARATION

STOP!-not to me, at this bitter departing,
Speak of the sure consolations of time!
Fresh be the wound, still-renew'd be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.

But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature
Wills that remembrance should always decay-
If the loved form and the deep-cherish'd 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 slumberDead be the past and its phantoms to me !

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.

CLXXIV

TO MY INCONSTANT MISTRESS

WHEN thou, poor excommunicate

From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate

Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy.

A fairer hand than thine shall cure

That heart which thy false oaths did wound;
And to my soul, a soul more pure

Than thine shall by love's hand be bound,
And both with equal glory crown'd.

Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain
To Love, as I did once to thee;
When all thy tears shall be as vain
As mine were then, for thou shalt be
Damned for thy false apostacy.

CLXXV

THOMAS CAREW.

SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part.

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
MICHAEL DRAYTON

CLXXVI

A FAREWELL

WITH all my will, but much against my heart,

We two now part.

My very Dear,

Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.

It needs no art,

With faint, averted feet

And many a tear,

In our opposed paths to persevere.

Go thou to East, I West.

We will not say

There's any hope, it is so far away.

But, O, my Best,

When the one darling of our widowhead,

The nursling Grief,

Is dead,

And no dews blur our eyes

To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,

Perchance we may,

Where now this night is day,

And even through faith of still averted feet,

Making full circle of our banishment,

Amazed meet;

The bitter journey to the bourn so sweet
Seasoning the termless feast of our content

With tears of recognition never dry.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

LOVE WITH MANY LYRES

He strikes a hundred lyres, a thousand strings, Yet one at heart are all the songs he sings.