• To-day? Lo! night is here.
• The glen grows heavy with some veil
• Risen from the earth or fall'n to make earth pale;
• And all stands hushed to eye and ear,
• Until the night-wind shake the shade like fear
• 210 And every covert quail.

• Ah! by a colder wave
• On deathlier airs the hour must come
• Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
• Between the lips of the low cave
• Against that night the lapping waters lave,
• And the dark lips are dumb.

• But there Love's self doth stand,
• And with Life's weary wings far-flown,
• And with Death's eyes that make the water moan,
• 220 Gathers the water in his hand:
• And they that drink know nought of sky or land
• But only love alone.

• O soul-sequestered face
• Far off,—O were that night but now!
• So even beside that stream even I and thou
  page: 114  
• Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace,
• And in the zone of that supreme embrace
• Bind aching breast and brow.

• O water whispering
• 230 Still through the dark into mine ears,—
• As with mine eyes, is it not now with hers?—
• My eyes that add to thy cold spring,
• Wan water, wandering water weltering,
• This hidden tide of tears.

   

• Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
• Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
• Whose head upon my knee to-night
• Rests for a while, as if grown light
• With all our dances and the sound
• To which the wild tunes spun you round:
• Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
• Of kisses which the blush between
• Could hardly make much daintier;
• 10 Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
• Is countless gold incomparable:
• Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
• Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
• Poor flower left torn since yesterday
• Until to-morrow leave you bare;
• Poor handful of bright spring-water
• Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face;
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• Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
• Thus with your head upon my knee;—
• 20 Whose person or whose purse may be
• The lodestar of your reverie?

• This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
• A change from mine so full of books,
• Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
• So many captive hours of youth,—
• The hours they thieve from day and night
• To make one's cherished work come right,
• And leave it wrong for all their theft,
• Even as to-night my work was left:
• 30 Until I vowed that since my brain
• And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
• My feet should have some dancing too:—
• And thus it was I met with you.
• Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
• For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
• You seem too tired to get to bed.

• It was a careless life I led
• When rooms like this were scarce so strange
• Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
  page: 117  
• 40 The many aims or the few years?
• Because to-night it all appears
• Something I do not know again.

• The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
• The cloud that made it turn and swim
• While hour by hour the books grew dim.
• Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
• For all your wealth of loosened hair,
• Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
• And warm sweets open to the waist,
• 50 All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
• You know not what a book you seem,
• Half-read by lightning in a dream!
• How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
• And I should be ashamed to say:—
• Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
• But while my thought runs on like this
• With wasteful whims more than enough,
• I wonder what you're thinking of.

• If of myself you think at all,
• 60 What is the thought?—conjectural
• On sorry matters best unsolved?—
  page: 118  
• Or inly is each grace revolved
• To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
• To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
• That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
• And let you rest upon my knee.

• For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
• You're thankful for a little rest,—
• Glad from the crush to rest within,
• 70 From the heart-sickness and the din
• Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
• Mocks you because your gown is rich;
• And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
• Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
• Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
• And other nights than yours bespeak;
• And from the wise unchildish elf,
• To schoolmate lesser than himself,
• Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
• 80 Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
• From shame and shame's outbraving too,
• Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
• But most from the hatefulness of man
• Who spares not to end what he began,
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• Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
• Who, having used you at his will,
• Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
• I serve the dishes and the wine.

• Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
• 90 I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
• And do not let me think of you,
• Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
• What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
• Your head there, so you do not sleep;
• But that the weariness may pass
• And leave you merry, take this glass.
• Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
• If ne'er in rings it had been dressed
• Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

• 100 Behold the lilies of the field,
• They toil not neither do they spin;
• (So doth the ancient text begin,—
• Not of such rest as one of these
• Can share.) Another rest and ease
• Along each summer-sated path
• From its new lord the garden hath,
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• Than that whose spring in blessings ran
• Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• 110 The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,—
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• But must your roses die, and those
• Their purfled buds that should unclose?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• 120 And here's the naked stem of thorns.

• Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
• As yet of winter. Sickness here
• Or want alone could waken fear,—
• Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
• Except when there may rise unsought
• Haply at times a passing thought
• Of the old days which seem to be
• Much older than any history
  page: 121  
• That is written in any book;
• 130 When she would lie in fields and look
• Along the ground through the blown grass,
• And wonder where the city was,
• Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
• They told her then for a child's tale.

• Jenny, you know the city now.
• A child can tell the tale there, how
• Some things which are not yet enroll'd
• In market-lists are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• 140 When Saturday night is market-night
• Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
• And market-night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertise dainties through the dirt;
• Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learned your look
• When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
• 150 Along the streets alone, and there,
• Round the long park, across the bridge,
  page: 122  
• The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
• Wind on together and apart,
• A fiery serpent for your heart.

• Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
• Suppose I were to think aloud,—
• What if to her all this were said?
• Why, as a volume seldom read
• Being opened halfway shuts again,
• 160 So might the pages of her brain
• Be parted at such words, and thence
• Close back upon the dusty sense.
• For is there hue or shape defin'd
• In Jenny's desecrated mind,
• Where all contagious currents meet,
• A Lethe of the middle street?
• Nay, it reflects not any face,
• Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
• But as they coil those eddies clot,
• 170 And night and day remember not.

• Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
• Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
• So young and soft and tired; so fair,
  page: 123  
• With chin thus nestled in your hair,
• Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
• As if some sky of dreams shone through!

• Just as another woman sleeps!
• Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
• Of doubt and horror,—what to say
• 180 Or think,—this awful secret sway,
• The potter's power over the clay!
• Of the same lump (it has been said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
• And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
• So mere a woman in her ways:
• And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
• Are like her lips that tell the truth,
• 190 My cousin Nell is fond of love.
• And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
• Who does not prize her, guard her well?
• The love of change, in cousin Nell,
• Shall find the best and hold it dear:
• The unconquered mirth turn quieter
  page: 124  
• Not through her own, through others' woe:
• The conscious pride of beauty glow
• Beside another's pride in her,
• One little part of all they share.
• 200 For Love himself shall ripen these
• In a kind soil to just increase
• Through years of fertilizing peace.

• Of the same lump (as it is said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• It makes a goblin of the sun.

• So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
• Of the first common kindred link?
• Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
• 210 It seems that all things take their turn;
• And who shall say but this fair tree
• May need, in changes that may be,
• Your children's children's charity?
• Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
• Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
• Till in the end, the Day of Days,
  page: 125  
• At Judgment, one of his own race,
• As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
• His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

• 220 How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!
• Might not the dial scorn itself
• That has such hours to register?
• Yet as to me, even so to her
• Are golden sun and silver moon,
• In daily largesse of earth's boon,
• Counted for life-coins to one tune.
• And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
• Through some one man this life be lost,
• Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?

• 230 Fair shines the gilded aureole
• In which our highest painters place
• Some living woman's simple face.
• And the stilled features thus descried
• As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
• The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
• And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
• With Raffael's or Lionardo's hand
• To show them to men's souls, might stand,
  page: 126  
• Whole ages long, the whole world through,
• 240 For preachings of what God can do.
• What has man done here? How atone,
• Great God, for this which man has done?
• And for the body and soul which by
• Man's pitiless doom must now comply
• With lifelong hell, what lullaby
• Of sweet forgetful second birth
• Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
• What measure of God's rest endows
• The many mansions of his house.

• 250 If but a woman's heart might see
• Such erring heart unerringly
• For once! But that can never be.

• Like a rose shut in a book
• In which pure women may not look,
• For its base pages claim control
• To crush the flower within the soul;
• Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
• Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
• To the vile text, are traced such things
• 260 As might make lady's cheek indeed
  page: 127  
• More than a living rose to read;
• So nought save foolish foulness may
• Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
• And so the life-blood of this rose,
• Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
• Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
• Yet still it keeps such faded show
• Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
• That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
• 270 The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
• Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
• Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
• Love roses better for its sake:—
• Only that this can never be:—
• Even so unto her sex is she.

• Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
• The woman almost fades from view.
• A cipher of man's changeless sum
• Of lust, past, present, and to come,
• 280 Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
• To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

• Like a toad within a stone
• Seated while Time crumbles on;
  page: 128  
• Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
• For Man's transgression at the first;
• Which, living through all centuries,
• Not once has seen the sun arise;
• Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
• The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
• 290 Which always—whitherso the stone
• Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
• Aye, and shall not be driven out
• Till that which shuts him round about
• Break at the very Master's stroke,
• And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
• And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
• Even so within this world is Lust.

• Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
• Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
• 300 You'd not believe by what strange roads
• Thought travels, when your beauty goads
• A man to-night to think of toads!
• Jenny, wake up .... Why, there's the dawn!

• And there's an early waggon drawn
• To market, and some sheep that jog