A Maiden's Pledge (Song)

I do not wish to win your vow

To take me soon or late as bride,
And lift me from the nook where now
I tarry your farings to my side.
I am blissful ever to abide
In this green labyrinth--let all be,
If but, whatever may betide,
You do not leave off loving me!

Your comet-comings I will wait
With patience time shall not wear through;
The yellowing years will not abate
My largened love and truth to you,
Nor drive me to complaint undue
Of absence, much as I may pine,
If never another 'twixt us two
Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.

The Voice of Things

Forty Augusts--aye, and several more--ago,

   When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,

The waves huzza'd like a multitude below

   In the sway of an all-including joy

      Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after,

   When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,

And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter

   At the lot of men, and all the vapoury

      Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where

   Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;

But they supplicate now--like a congregation there

   Who murmur the Confession--I outside,

      Prayer denied.

Penance

"Why do you sit, O pale thin man,

   At the end of the room

By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?

  --It is cold as a tomb,

And there's not a spark within the grate;

   And the jingling wires

   Are as vain desires

   That have lagged too late."

"Why do I?  Alas, far times ago

   A woman lyred here

In the evenfall; one who fain did so

   From year to year;

And, in loneliness bending wistfully,

   Would wake each note

   In sick sad rote,

   None to listen or see!

"I would not join.  I would not stay,

   But drew away,

Though the winter fire beamed brightly . . . Aye!

   I do to-day

What I would not then; and the chill old keys,

   Like a skull's brown teeth

   Loose in their sheath,

   Freeze my touch; yes, freeze."

A Meeting with Despair

As evening shaped I found me on a moor

   Which sight could scarce sustain:

The black lean land, of featureless contour,

   Was like a tract in pain.

"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one

   Where many glooms abide;

Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun -

   Lightless on every side.

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught

   To see the contrast there:

The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,

   "There's solace everywhere!"

Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood

   I dealt me silently

As one perverse--misrepresenting Good

   In graceless mutiny.

Against the horizon's dim-discerned wheel

   A form rose, strange of mould:

That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel

   Rather than could behold.

"'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent

   To darkness!" croaked the Thing.

"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent

   On my new reasoning.

 "Yea--but await awhile!" he cried.  "Ho-ho! -

   Look now aloft and see!"

I looked.  There, too, sat night:  Heaven's radiant show

   Had gone.  Then chuckled he.