A Boys Will | Page 6

the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who
lay that night awake.
Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the
flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.

But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And
morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
To the Thawing Wind (audio)
COME with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the
nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank
steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate'er you do
to-night,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ices go;

Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit's crucifix;
Burst
into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling
pages o'er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.
A Prayer in Spring

OH, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think
so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the
springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,

Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in
the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And
make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is
heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a
blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is
love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far
ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.
Flower-gathering
I LEFT you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked
a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the
gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty grey with roaming?
Are you dumb
because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?
All for me?
And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me
from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the
measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little
while
That I've been long away.
Rose Pogonias
A SATURATED meadow,
Sun-shaped and jewel-small,
A circle
scarcely wider
Than the trees around were tall;
Where winds were
quite excluded,
And the air was stifling sweet
With the breath of
many flowers,--
A temple of the heat.
There we bowed us in the
burning,

As the sun's right worship is,
To pick where none could
miss them
A thousand orchises;
For though the grass was scattered,

Yet every second spear
Seemed tipped with wings of color,
That
tinged the atmosphere.
We raised a simple prayer
Before we left the
spot,
That in the general mowing
That place might be forgot;
Or
if not all so favoured,
Obtain such grace of hours,
That none should

mow the grass there
While so confused with flowers.
Asking for Roses
A HOUSE that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors
that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and
with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.
I pass by
that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner
of those is.
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one
we must ask if we want any roses.'
So we must join hands in the dew
coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn
and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as
beggars for roses.
'Pray, are you within there, Mistress
Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.

'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again;
there's two come for roses.
'A word with you, that of the singer
recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower
unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not
gathering roses.'
We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not
caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on
us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses.
Waiting
Afield at Dusk
WHAT things for dream there are when spectre-like,
Moving among
tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubble field,

From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony
of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full
moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow
until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the night-hawks peopling
heaven,
Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
Or plunging
headlong with fierce twang afar;

And on the bat's mute antics, who
would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose

it when he pirouettes,
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
On
the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and
rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,

After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once--twice--and thrice if I
be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not
here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering
sweetness;
But on the memory of one absent most,
For whom these
lines when they shall greet her eye.
In a Vale
WHEN