Keep, keep for ever your grace and gladness,

Bend once to bless me your brow of snow—

Then meet me next like some far-off sadness,

Some dead ambition of long ago.

[34]

[34]

 A RING’S SECRET

Can you forgive me, that I wear,

Dearest, a curl of sunny hair,

Not yours—yet for the sake of Love,

And tender faith it minds me of?

’Tis in this quaint old signet ring,

A curious, chased, engraven thing

That in some window charm’d my eye

And told of the last century.

Pure gold it was, but dull and blotch’d,

And bright’ning it one day, I touch’d

A spring that oped a little lid;

And there, for generations hid

In its small shrine of pallid gold—

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