shrive: Assoilèd from all selfish taint, Die, Love, whom Friendship will survive. Nor heat nor folly gave thee birth; And briefness does but raise thy worth. Let the grey hermit Friendship hoard Whatever sainted Love bequeathed, And in some hidden scroll record The vows in pious moments breathed. Vex not the lost with idle suit, Oh lonely heart, be mute, be mute.
PARTING
As when a traveller, forced to journey back, Takes coin by coin, and gravely counts them o'er, Grudging each payment, fearing lest he lack, Before he can regain the friendly shore; So reckoned I your sojourn, day by day, So grudged I every week that dropt away. And as a prisoner, doomed and bound, upstarts From shattered dreams of wedlock and repose, At sudden rumblings of the market-carts, Which bring to town the strawberry and the rose, And wakes to meet sure death; so shuddered I, To hear you meditate your gay Good-bye. But why not gay? For, if there's aught you lose, It is but drawing off a wrinkled glove To turn the keys of treasuries, free to choose Throughout the hundred-chambered house of love, This pathos draws from you, though true and kind, Only bland pity for the left-behind. We part; you comfort one bereaved, unmanned; You calmly chide the silence and the grief; You touch me once with light and courteous hand, And with a sense of something like relief You turn away from what may seem to be Too hard a trial of your charity. So closes in the life of life; so ends The soaring of the spirit. What remains? To take whate'er the Muse's mother lends, One sweet sad thought in many soft refrains And half reveal in Coan gauze of rhyme A cherished image of your joyous prime.
ALL THAT WAS POSSIBLE
Slope under slope the pastures dip With ribboned waterfalls, and make Scant room for just a village strip, The setting of a sapphire lake. And here, when summer draws the kine To upland grasses patched with snow, Our travellers rest not, only dine, Then driven by Furies, onward go. For pilgrims of the pointed stick, With passport case for scallop shell, Scramble for worshipped Alps too quick To care for vales where mortals dwell. Twice daily swarms the hostel's pier, Twice daily is the table laid; And, "Oh, that some would tarry
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