A picture-frame for you to fill, A paltry setting for your face, A thing that has no worth until You lend it something of your grace

picture-frame

I send (unhappy I that sing Laid by awhile upon the shelf) Because I would not send a thing Less charming than you are yourself.

And happier than I, alas!  (Dumb thing, I envy its delight) ’Twill wish you well, the looking-glass, And look you in the face to-night.

1869.

p. 17IX—TO K. DE M.

p. 17

A lover of the moorland bare And honest country winds, you were; The silver-skimming rain you took; And loved the floodings of the brook, Dew, frost and mountains, fire and seas, Tumultuary silences, Winds that in darkness fifed a tune, And the high-riding, virgin moon.

lover

And as the berry, pale and sharp, Springs on some ditch’s counterscarp In our ungenial, native north— You put your frosted wildings forth, p. 18And on the heath, afar from man, A strong and bitter virgin ran.

p. 18

The berry ripened keeps the rude And racy flavour of the wood. And you that loved the empty plain All redolent of wind and rain, Around you still the curlew sings— The freshness of the weather clings— The maiden jewels of the rain Sit in your dabbled locks again.

p. 19X—TO N. V. DE G. S.

p. 19

The unfathomable sea, and time, and tears, The deeds of heroes and the crimes of kings Dispart us; and the river of events Has, for an age of years, to east and west More widely borne our cradles. Thou to me Art foreign, as when seamen at the dawn Descry a land far off and know not which. So I approach uncertain; so I cruise Round thy mysterious islet, and behold Surf and great mountains and loud river-bars, And from the shore hear inland voices call.

The

p. 20Strange is the seaman’s heart; he hopes, he fears; Draws closer and sweeps wider from that coast; Last, his rent sail refits, and to the 

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