flowers a-row: He crossed the straits like streams that flow, The ocean dark as wine, To my true love to whisper low, To be your Valentine. The Spring half-raised her drowsy head, Besprent with drifted snow, "I'll send an April day," she said, "To lands of wintry woe." He came,—the winter's overthrow,— With showers that sing and shine, Pied daisies round your path to strow, To be your Valentine. Where sands of Egypt, swart and red, 'Neath suns Egyptian glow, In places of the princely dead, By the Nile's overflow, The swallow preened her wings to go, And for the North did pine, And fain would brave the frost, her foe, To be your Valentine. ENVOY. Spring, Swallow, South Wind, even so, Their various voice combine; But that they crave on me bestow, To be your Valentine. 

ENVOY

 BALLADE OF SUMMER. TO C. H. A. When strawberry pottles are common and cheap, Ere elms be black, or limes be sere, When midnight dances are murdering sleep, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And far from Fleet street, far from here, The Summer is Queen in the length of the land, And moonlit nights they are soft and clear, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand! When clamour that doves in the lindens keep Mingles with musical plash of the weir, Where drowned green tresses of crowsfoot creep, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And better a crust and a beaker of beer, With rose-hung hedges on either hand, Than a palace in town and a prince's cheer, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand! When big trout late in the twilight leap, When cuckoo clamoureth far and near, When glittering scythes in the hayfield reap, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And it's oh to sail, with the wind to steer, While kine knee deep in the water stand, On a Highland loch, on a Lowland mere, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand! ENVOY. Friend, with the fops, while we dawdle here, Then comes in the sweet o' the year! And the Summer runs out, like grains of sand, When fans for a penny are sold in the Strand! 

TO C. H. A.

ENVOY

 BALLADE OF AUTUMN. We built a castle in the air, In summer weather, you and I, The wind and sun were in your hair,— Gold hair against a sapphire sky: When Autumn came, with leaves that fly Before the storm, across the plain, You fled from me, with scarce a sigh— My Love returns no more again! The windy lights of Autumn flare: I watch the moonlit sails go by; I marvel how men toil and fare, The weary business that they ply! Their voyaging is vanity, And fairy gold is all their gain, And all the winds of winter 

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