And if I take you, dames, to task, And say it frankly without guile, Then you are Gypsies in a mask, And I the lady all the while.

If, on the heath, below the moon, I court and play with paler blood, Me false to mine dare whisper none,— One sallow horseman knows me good.

Go, keep your cheek’s rose from the rain, For teeth and hair with shopmen deal; My swarthy tint is in the grain, The rocks and forest know it real.

The wild air bloweth in our lungs, The keen stars twinkle in our eyes, The birds gave us our wily tongues, The panther in our dances flies.

You doubt we read the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without glass we fathom you.

DAYS.

Damsels of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

THE CHARTIST’S COMPLAINT.

Day! hast thou two faces, Making one place two places? One, by humble farmer seen, Chill and wet, unlighted, mean, Useful only, triste and damp, Serving for a labourer’s lamp? Have the same mists another side, To be the appanage of pride, Gracing the rich man’s wood and lake, His park where amber mornings break, And treacherously bright to show His planted isle where roses glow? O Day! and is your mightiness A sycophant to smug success? Will the sweet sky and ocean broad Be fine accomplices to fraud? O Sun! I curse thy cruel ray: Back, back to chaos, harlot Day!

MY GARDEN.

If I could put my woods in song, And tell what’s there enjoyed, All men would to my gardens throng, And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,— Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; And rank the savage maples grow From spring’s faint flush to autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge Which older forests bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound.

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