IX.

No reply. The fountain's warble
In the courtyard sounds alone.
As the water to the marble

So my heart falls with a moan
From love-sighing

To this dying.

Death forerunneth Love to win

'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.'

X.

Will you come? When I'm departed
Where all sweetnesses are hid,
Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
Will not lift up either lid.
Cry, O lover,

Love is over!

Cry, beneath the cypress green, 'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!'

ΧΙ.

When the angelus is ringing,

Near the convent will you walk,

And recall the choral singing

Which brought angels down our talk ?

Spirit-shriven

I viewed Heaven,

Till you smiled-'Is earth unclean,

'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?'

XII.

When beneath the palace-lattice
You ride slow as you have done,
And you see a face there, that is
Not the old familiar one,—

'Here

Will you oftly

Murmur softly,

ye watched me morn and e'en,

Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!'

XIII.

When the palace-ladies, sitting

Round your gittern, shall have said, 'Poet, sing those verses written For the lady who is dead,'

Will you tremble

Yet dissemble,

Or sing hoarse, with tears between, 'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen?'

XIV.

'Sweetest eyes!' how sweet in flowings The repeated cadence is!

Though you sang a hundred poems,

Still the best one would be this.
I can hear it

"Twixt my spirit

And the earth-noise intervene

'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen

XV.

But the priest waits for the praying,
And the choir are on their knees,
And the soul must pass away in

Strains more solemn-high than these.
Miserere

For the weary!

Oh, no longer for Catrine

'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!'

XVI.

Keep my riband, take and keep it,
(I have loosed it from my hair)*
Feeling, while you overweep it,
Not alone in your despair,
Since with saintly

Watch unfaintly

Out of heaven shall o'er you lean 'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.'

XVII.

But-but now-yet unremovëd
Up to heaven, they glisten fast;
You may cast away, Beloved,
In your future all my past:
Such old phrases

May be praises

For some fairer bosom-queen--
'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen!'

* Sbe left him the riband from her hair.

XVIII.

Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
Faithless, faithless,-praised amiss
If a tear be of your showing,
Dropt for any hope of HIS!
Death has boldness

Besides coldness,

If unworthy tears demean
'Sweetest eyes, were ever seen.'

XIX.

I will look out to his future;
I will bless it till it shine.
Should he ever be a suitor

Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,

Angels shield them,

Whatsoever eyes terrene

Be the sweetest HIS have seen!

VOL. III.

N

LIFE AND LOVE.

I.

FAST this Life of mine was dying,
Blind already and calm as death,
Snowflakes on her bosom lying
Scarcely heaving with her breath.

II.

Love came by, and having known her
In a dream of fabled lands,

Gently stooped, and laid upon her
Mystic chrism of holy hands;

III.

Drew his smile across her folded

Eyelids, as the swallow dips; Breathed as finely as the cold did, Through the locking of her lips.

IV.

So, when Life looked upward, being

Warmed and breathed on from above, What sight could she have for seeing,

Evermore... but only LOVE?