The House of Life

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Part I

Youth and Change.

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Part II

Change and Fate.

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      Scribe: May Morris

• A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
• Memorial from thy the Soul's eternity
• To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
• Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
• Of its own intricate arduous fulness reverent:
• Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
• As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see
• Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

• A sonnet is a coin, whose its face reveals
• 10 Thy The soul,— its rear-type converse, to what Power 'tis due:—
Added Text
rear-foil  mintage
converse  mint-type
• Whether in for tribute to the august appeals
• Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
• It serve; or, 'mid the dark world's wharf's cavernous breath,
• In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

    Scribe: DGR     Scribe: May Morris (probable)

• I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
• Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
• And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen past
• To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
• And Youth, with some bright spray of woman's still some single golden hair
• Yet to Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
• Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
• And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.

• Love's throne was not with these; but far above
• 10 All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
• He sat in breathless bowers they dream ed not of;
• Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
• And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
• And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.

    Scribe: DGR

• As when desire, long darkling, dawns, & first
• The mother looks upon the newborn child,
• One hour Even so my Lady turned her eyes stood at gaze & smiled,
• And When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
• Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
• And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
• Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
• Cried to on him, and bonds of birth were burst.

• Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
• 10 Together, as his fullgrown feet now tread range
• About us The grove, & his kind warm hands our couch prepare:
• Till to his song at once our Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
• Are Be born his children, when the shadows Death's nuptial change
• Leaves us for last light the halo of his hair.

    Scribe: DGR

• O thou who in this Love's hour unswervingly ecstatically
• Unto my lips dost dost ever more present
• The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
• Whom clasping I have I have clinging [???] neared & felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who not in words without speech hast owned him, and intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured [?] o'er the cup, Remember me:—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to him Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim goal shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work [???] deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul.

   

• O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
• Unto my lips heart dost ever more present ,
• The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
  Added TextClothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
• Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured , o'er the cup, Remember me!— “I am thine, thou'rt one with me!“—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

    Scribe: DGR

• When do I see thee most, beloved one?
• When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
• Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
• The worship of that Love through thee made known?
• Or when in the dark dusk hours, (we two alone,)
• Along thy face, along thy neck, along
• Thy breast my pressed lips feel the pulses throng,
• My happy cheek upon thy bosom lies,
• And our lips mingle kisses, words, & sighs,
• And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

• O Love, my love! when I no more may see
• 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
• Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
• How then shall sound, upon Life's darkening slope,
• The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
• The wind of Death's imperishable wing?

    Scribe: DGR

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
• Far-heard, that wings  That wings, far-heard  That slowly wings his gradual way along
• Added TextFrom far that wings his gradual way along
• The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
• Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
• But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
• Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
• Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet tune strain suffers wrong,
• Through our contending kisses oft unheard.

• What of that hour alas O love at last, when for her sake
• 10 No wing shall may fly to me nor song shall may flow;
• Till When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
• The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
• And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
• Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?

    Scribe: May Morris

• By what word's power, the key to paths untrod,
• Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
• Till parted waves of song yield up the shore
• Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
• For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
• Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
• Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
• Thee from myself, neither our Love from God.

• Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
• 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
• As to all hearts all things shall signify ;
• Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
• As instantaneous penetrating sense,
• In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.

    Scribe: DGR

• What withering smouldering senses in death's sick delay
• Or seizure of malign vicissitude
• Can rob this body of honour, or denude
• This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
• For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
• With these my lips such gracious consonant interlude
• As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
• The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.

• I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
• 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I & she,—
• A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
• A god when all our all our life-breaths met to fan
• Our The Our life-blood, till the immingling intense Love's emulous ardours ran,
• Fire within fire, desire in deity.

    Scribe: DGR

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• To all the spirits of love that wander by
• Along the love-sown fallowfield of sleep
• My lady lies apparent; and the deep
• Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
• The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
• Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
• When Fate's one day doth from his harvest reap
• The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.

• First touched, the hand now warm beneath my neck
• 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
• Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
• Where ’neath one tress the longing long did wake one shorn tress [?]
• Added TextWhere one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
• prolonged the/ [?]
• the longing long did wake/felt/stilled long
• with/and longing/my wonder[?]
• And next the heart there trembling that trembled for its sake
• Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.

    Scribe: DGR

• Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone,
• And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
• In idle scornful hours he flings away;
• And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
• Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
• Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
• Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
• And thank his wings today that he is flown.

• My lady only loves the heart of Love:
• 10 Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
• His [?] deep-bower of root His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
• There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of
• Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowy hair above,
• Seals with thy mouth his immortality.

    Scribe: DGR

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• Love brought to us a white-stoled harp-player
• Even as my lady and I lay all alone;
• Saying: “Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
• Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
• Only my strains are to my dear ones dear.”
• Then said I: “Through thy music's passionate tone
• Even now, Lord Love, I heard this harp make moan
• And still methought the note was loud deep and clear.”

• Then said my lady: “Even as thou art Love,
• 10 Lo, this is Worship this man hath for me.
• Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
• But where wan water sighs is high throbs within the grove
• And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
• This harp still makes my name its voluntary.”

   

• O lord of all compassionate control,
• O Love! let this my Lady's picture glow
• Under my hand to praise her name, and show
• Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
• That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
• Beyond the glory light that the her sweet glances throw
• And [?] refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
• The very sky and sea-line of her soul.

• Lo! it is done. Above the long lithe lifted throat
• 10 The moved mouth [?] its authenticates the voice and kiss,
• The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
• Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
• That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
• They that would know her face look on her must come to me.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair
• As close she leaned and poured her heart through thee,
• Whereof the articulate throbs accompany
• The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness fair,—
• Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware,—
• Oh let thy silent song disclose to me
• That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree
• Like married music in Love's answering air.

• Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought,
• 10 Her bosom to the writing closelier press'd,
• And her breast's secrets peered into her breast;
• When through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought
• My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught
• The words that made her love the loveliest.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
• On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
• Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fanned:—
• An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
• Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
• Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land
• Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spanned
• With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—

• Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
• 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
• Whose passionate hearts are were lean ed by Love's high decree
• Together on his heart for ever true,
• As the white cloud-foaming firmamental blue
• Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
• How much I love you?” “You I love even so,
• And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
• How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
• Your love, so much is all my love's concern.”
• “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth grow,
• Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!”
• Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.

• Ah! happy they to whom such words as these
• 10 In youth have served for speech the whole day long,
• Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng,
• Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,—
• What while Love breathed in sighs and silences
• Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
• I lay, and spread your hair on either side,
• And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
• Look through the rippling golden tresses here and there.
• On these debateable borders of the year
• Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
• The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow ;
• And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.

• But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
• 10 So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
• Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
• Up your warm throat to your warm lips; for this
• Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
• With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.

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    Scribe: DGR

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• Have you not noted, in some family
• Where two dear ones from the were born of a first marriage-bed,
• How still they own their fragrant bond, though fed
• And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
• That How to their father's children they shall be
• In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
• Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
• And in a word complete community?

• Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
• 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
• One nearer kindred than I eer knew of birth hinted of.
• O born with me somewhere that men forget,
• And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
• Known for my life's own sister well enough!

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    Scribe: DGR

• What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
• The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
• And Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
• In its own likeness make thee half divine?
• Was it that Juno's face brow might stand the a sign
• Or not For ever? and [?] the mien of Pallas be
• A deadly curse thing? and that all men might see
• In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?

• What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
• 10The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
• Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
• Aye, shut hug the casket close now! Whither they go
• Thou may'st not dare to think; nor canst thou know
• If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

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    Scribe: May Morris

• Those envied places which do know her well,
• And are so scornful of this lonely place,
• Now for a while Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
• Nowhere but here she is: and as while Love's spell
• From his predominant presence doth compel
• All alien hours, an outworn populace,
• The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
• With their sweet confederate music favorable.

• Now many memories make solicitous
• 10 The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit
• With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
• As here between our kisses we sit thus
• Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
• Speechless while things forgotten call to us.

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    Scribe: May Morris

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• What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
• Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
• What marshalled marvels on the skirt of May,
• Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
• What glory of change by nature's hand amass'd
• Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
• Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
• Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?

• Love's very vesture & elect disguise
• 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
• Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
• Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
• Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
• Unborn, that read these words and saw her not

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    Scribe: May Morris

• Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
• Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
• Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
• Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
• Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
• More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
• Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
• Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.

• As many men are poets in their youth
• 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
• Even through all change the indomitable song;
• So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
• Rends shallower grace with ruin sore forsooth void of ruth,
• Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

    Scribe: DGR

• Your hands lie open in the long lush grass
• And the sweet points look through like rosy blooms:
• The panting meadow Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
• With billowing skies that scatter & amass:
• AllAround us [?] our nest, far as the eye can pass,
• Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
• 'Tis visible silence, as of the like the still hour-glass.

• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
• 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky :—
• Even So this wing'd hour is drop t ped to us from above.
• Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
• This close-companioned inarticulate hour
• When twofold silence was the song of love.

    Scribe: DGR

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• Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
• And The sweet finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
• Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams & glooms
• With 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass:
• All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
• Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
• Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
• 'Tis visible silence, like the still as the hourglass.

• Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
• 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
• So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
• Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
• This close-companioned inarticulate hour
• When twofold silence was the song of love.

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    Scribe: May Morris

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• Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
• When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
• Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
• So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace grace
• When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
• What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
• Gathers and garners from all things that are
• Their silent penetrative loveliness?

• O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
• 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
• With flowering rush and sceptered arrow-leaf,
• So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
• Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
• And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.

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    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray.

• Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
• About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
• In gracious fostering union garlanded;
• Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
• Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
• Her mouth's culled sweetness by the kisses shed
• On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
• Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—

• What sweeter than these things, except the thing
• 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
• The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
• And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
• Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
• The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?

    Scribe: May Morris

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• Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
• Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,
• With still tears showering and averted face,
• Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
• And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
• I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
• Against all ill the fortified strong place
• And sweet reserve of sovereign countercharms.

• And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
• 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and screens turns away
• All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
• Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
• And as soft waters warble to the moon,
• Our answering kisses spirits chime one roundelay.

    Scribe: DGR

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• I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
• Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
• And round him ladies thronged in close pursuit,
• Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
• And from one hand the petal and the core
• Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
• Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
• Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.

• At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
• 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
• And as I took them, at her touch they shone
• With inmost azure heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
• And then Love said: “Lo! when the hand is hers,
• Follies of love are love's high ministers.”

    Scribe: DGR

• Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
• The dead, but little in his heart can find,
• Since without need of thought to his clear mind
• Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
• Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
• Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
• Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
• Where night-racks shroud the Old Love fugitive.

• There is a change in every hour's recall,
• 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
• On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
• Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
• The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
• Even as the beads of a told rosary.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Each hour until we meet is as a bird
• That wings from far his gradual way along
• The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
• Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
• But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
• Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
• Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong,
• Full oft through our contending joys unheard.

• What of that hour at last, when for her sake
• 10 No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
• When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
• The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
• And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
• Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?

    Scribe: DGR

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• Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
• Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,
• Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
• Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
• All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
• Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
• Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
• Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—

• What word can answer to thy word,—what gaze
• 10 To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
• My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there,
• Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
• What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
• O lovely and beloved, O my love?

    Scribe: DGR D. G. Rossetti Feb. 20, 1881     Scribe: May Morris

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• Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
• But as the meaning of all things that are;
• A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
• Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
• Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
• Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
• Being of its furthest fires oracular ;—
• The evident heart of all life sown and mown.

• Even such Love is ; and is not thy name Love?
• 10 Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
• All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
• Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
• And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
• Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• What other woman could be loved like you,
• Or how of you should love possess his fill?
• After the fulness of all rapture, still,—
• As at the end of some deep avenue
• A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view
• Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,—
• Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
• Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.

• And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
• 10 Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings
• Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
• From limpid lambent hours of day begun ;—
• Even so, through eyes & voice within your arms, your soul doth move
• My soul with changeful light of infinite love.

    Scribe: May Morris

• Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
• Because my lady is more lovely still.
• Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
• To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
• Of delicate life Love labours to assess
• My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
• How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
• But as that beauty's sovereign votaress.”

• Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
• 10 And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
• An emulous star too near the moon will ride,—
• Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
• Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
• Lady, not thou but she was glorified.

    Scribe: DGR

• Love, through your body spirit and mine what summer eve
• Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
• Since this day's sun of passion rapture filled the west
• And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
• Now Awhile now softlier clinging let your bosom heave,
• While As in Love's harbour, between breast and breast,
• Within your cherishing arms I sink to rest,
• Added TextAs in Love's harbour, even your that loving breast,
• Added TextAll care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
• And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.

• Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
• 10 Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses
• Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees.
• This day at least was Summer's paramour,
• Sun-coloured to the imperishable core
• With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease.

    Scribe: May Morris

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• High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal
• Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;
• A glance like water brimming with the sky
• Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
• Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral
• The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply
• All music and all silence held thereby;
• Deep locks, the brow's embowering coronal;
• A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine
• 10 To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
• Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,
• And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:—
• These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.
• Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.

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    Scribe: DGR

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• Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
• For how should I be loved as I love thee?—
• I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
• All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;—
• Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,
• And crowned with garlands culled from every tree,
• Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
• All beauties and all mysteries interwove.

• But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
• 10 “Then only” (say'st thou) “could I love thee less,
• When thou couldst doubt my love's equality.”
• Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
• Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,—
• Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.

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    Scribe: May Morris

• Could Juno's self more heavenly sovereign presence wear
• Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace?—
• Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face
• O'er poet's page golddeep-shadowed in thy hair?
• Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair,
• When from the sea of love's insatiate bliss
• Thy breast is reared, to yield to the last kiss
• Thy sweet lips like the last wave murmuring there?
Added Text
When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance
Hovers thy smile doth play, & mingles with thy glance
That sweet voice like etc.

• Before such triune loveliness divine
• 10 Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims
• The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine?
• Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names;
• And Venus Victrix to mine arms heart doth bring
• Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning.

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• Not I myself know all my love for thee:
• How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
• Tomorrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
• Shall birth and death, and all dark souls names that be
• As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
• Lash deaf mine ears & blind my face with spray;
• And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
• And ultimate outpost of eternity ?

• Lo! what am I to Love, the Lord of all?
• 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
• One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
• Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
• And veriest touch of powers primordial
• That any hour-girt life may understand.

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault,
• That I might love thee still in spite of it:
• Yet how should our Lord Love one ray remit curtail one whit
• Of the pure crown Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt?
• [?] AlasAlas! he can but make my heart's low vault
• Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit
• By thy gem-cinctured love-lamp exquisite
  Added TextBy thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite,
• With Like fiery chrysoprase and bright in deep basalt.

• Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
• 10 Myself within the beams his brow doth dart
• Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
• In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine:
• For lo! in honour of thine excellencies
• My heart takes pride to show how poor it is.

---

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• Not in thy body is thy life at all
• But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
• Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
• What else were sorrow's servant & death's thrall.
• Look on thyself without her, and recall
• The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
• That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs
• O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.

• Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
• 10 Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
• For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
• Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
• 'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
• Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
• Which once was all the life years held for thee,
• Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
• Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
• How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
• Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
• Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
• Make them of buried troth remembrancers? broken troth the star-chambers?

• Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
• 10 Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
• Matins & vespers Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
• Ah mercy Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
• In these the mystic culminant changes which approve
• The love-moon which that shall light my soul to Love?’

---

    Scribe: DGR

• “Thou ghost,” I said, “and is thy name Today?—
• Yesterday's son, with such a beaten an abject brow!—
• And can Tomorrow be more pale than thou?”
• While yet I spoke, the silence answered: “Yea,
• Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
• And each beforehand mak es -eth such such poor avow
• As of dead old leaves beneath the budding bough
• And Or night-drift that the sunbeams cast sundawn shreds away.”

• Then cried I: “Mother of many malisons,
• 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!’
• But therewithal the tremulous silence said:—
• “Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
• Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
• And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.”

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Set all in jet, yet glimmering like a star,
• O vain night sweeter than the nights of youth,
• Why should my heart within thy ring, forsooth,
• Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
• Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
• What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
• And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy & Ruth,
• Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?

• Nay, night! would false Love upon spread feign a grove in thee
• 10 That darkens round my the head with leaves, and bears
• Rest for worn man's eyes and music for sore his ears?
• O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
• Alas! how brief a grace, how doled to me,
• (To us, hard Love! now riots through my spheres
• Of life, and holds awake mine eyes & ears?
• O solitary night! thy shade should be &c
• A thicket hung with masks of mockery
• And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

---

   

---

• Set all in jet, but Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering like a with one star,
• O vain night sweeter than the nights of youth,
• Why should my heart within [?] within thy ring within thy spell, forsooth,
• Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
• Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
• What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
• And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
• Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?

• Nay, night! would false Love feign [?] counterfeit in thee
• 10 [indecipherable text]
  Added TextThe shadowy palpitating grove that bears
• Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
• O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
• A thicket hung with masks of mockery
• And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Would God your health were as this month of May
• Should be, were this not Englnd,—and your face
• Abroad, to give the gracious sunshine grace
• And laugh beneath the budding hawthorne spray!
• But here the hedgerows pine from green to grey
• While yet May's lyre is tuning, and her song
• Is weak in shade that should in sun be strong,
• And your pulse springs not to so faint a lay.

• If in my life be breath of Italy,
• 10 Would God that I might yield it all for to you!
• So, when such grafted warmth had burgeoned through
• The languor of your Maytime's hawthorne tree,
• My spirit at rest should walk unseen & see
• The garland of your beauty bloom anew.

---

    Scribe: DGR

• Two separate divided silences,
• Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
• Two glances which together would rejoice
• In love, now lost like stars beyond the dark trees;
• Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
• Two mouths which as two fire-flakes of flame
• Added Textbosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
• Would, meeting in one kiss clasp, be made the same;
• Two souls, the shores wave-mocked of sundering seas:—

• Such are we now. ; yet Ah! may our hope forecast
• 10 Haply Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
• Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
• An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
• Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
• Faint as dead shed flowers, the attenuated dream.

    Scribe: DGR

• Your voice is not on the air,
• Yet, love, I can hear your voice;
• It bids my heart to rejoice
• As knowing your heart is there,—
• A music sent to declare
• The truth of your steadfast choice.
• O love, how sweet is your voice!

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
• From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
• Like multiform circumfluence manifold
• Of the stark night night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
• Of fire dumb hoarse- tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
• Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
• Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
• Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.

• Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
• 10 One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
• Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
• Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
• Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
• Hath lord guest fire-fledged as thine, whose guest life lord is Love?

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
• So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
• Is passed at length; and garmented in green
• Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day.
• Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
• On all that road our footsteps erst had been
• Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
• Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.

• O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
• 10 No eyes but hers,—O Love and Hope the same!—
• Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
• That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
• O hers thy lips voice and very hers thy name!
• Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!

---

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• Kiss once again. Thank? Bless Love and Hope Full many a withered year
• Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday;
• And clasped together where the blown leaves lay,
• We long have knelt and wept full many a tear.
• Yet lo! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer,
• Flutes softly to us from some green byway:
• Those years, those tears are dead, but only they:—
• Kiss once again, my love Bless love and hope, mine own; for we are here.

• Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand
• 10 Whether in very truth, when we are dead,
• Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head
• Sole sunshine of the imperishable land;
• Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope,
• Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope.

---

    Scribe: May Morris

• Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
• Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
• Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
• Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
• Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
• Her warrant against all her haste might rue?—
• Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
• What unsunned gyres of waste eternity?

• And if I die first, shall death be then
• 10 A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep?—
• Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
• Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain,)
• The hour when you too learn that all is vain
• And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Because our talk was of the cloud-control
• And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
• Her kisses faltered at their ivory gate ,
• And her eyes dreamed towards a distant goal:
• But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
• Of joy, which its own hours annihilate,
• Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late,
• And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.

• Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
• 10 To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
• Which memory haunts & whither sleep may roam,—
• They only know for whom the roof of Love
• Is the still-seated secret of the grove,
• Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.

---

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• What shall be said of this embattled day
• And armèd occupation of this night
• By all thy foes beleaguered, now when sight
• Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
• Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—
• As every sense to which she dealt delight
• Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height
• To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?

• Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
• 10 Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
• Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
• Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
• Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
• And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
• Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
• But breathless with averted eyes elate
• She sits, with open lips and open ears,
• That it may call her twice. Mid doubts and fears
• Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
• A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
• And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.

• But now, whatever while the soul is fain
• 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
• The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,—
• No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
• O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
• Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

    Scribe: DGR

• There came an image in Life's retinue
• That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
• Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
• O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
• Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
• Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
• Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
• When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.

• But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
• 10 The banner rounds its staff, to furl and cling,—
• Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
• And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
• And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
• I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”

    Scribe: DGR

---

        Scribe: DGR

• And now Love sang: and but his was such a song,
• So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
• As souls disused in death's sterility
• May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
• And I was made aware of a dumb throng
• That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
• Each a known form All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
• The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
• Added TextThose shadows of our days [?]ed among

• They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
• 10 While fast together, drenched with tears of bliss alive from the abyss,
• Added TextWhile locked together in tears that Love calls his
• Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
• And pity of self through all made broken moan
• Which said, ‘For once, for once, for once alone!’
• And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—

    Scribe: DGR

• O bocca che nell' ora del compenso
• Tante volte baciai, e tante volte
• Sentii da te, con mille voti accolte,
• Parole [?] d'un Quella parola d'immortal e assenso consenso:—
• O possa dei tuoi baci il sacro incenso
• Ravvolger sempre in nuvole più folte
• Le antiche tante omai larve sepolte,
• Empiendo il ciel del nostro amore immenso!

• Vieni, beata bocca, O vieni ancora!
• 10 Lunghe da te Pensando a te, l'amor e da te disìa
• Dolce rugiada in ben rosata calorosa via. in roseata via(?)
• Non sei tu quella in cui ora ed ogn'ora
• Io vivo sol,— cui sol nell'alma mia
• La vita, e la morte, e l'amorè, adora? implora

---

Maggio 1869     Scribe: DGR

---

• O ye, that walk, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
• That walk with hollow faces burning white;
• What depth, alas! fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
• What long, what longer years hours, one longest lifelong night,
• Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
• Your hearts to rest last hope lost, who so in vain invite
• Your lips to feast on their forbidden food unto their unforgotten food,
• Ere ye, again ere ye again , shall see the light!

• Yea view Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
• 10 Where With grief-spurge grows and wan, with shame-wort burning red:
• O God Alas! if ever such a pillow could
• Give rest at all to any weary head,
• O God alone unknown, the God of good,
• How could it be till brain and soul were dead?

---

    Scribe: DGR

• ‘O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
• That walk with hollow faces burning white;
• What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
• What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
• Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
• Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
• Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
• Ere ye, ere ye again may shall see the light!

• Alas! the bitter banks of in Willowwood,
• 10 With grief-spurge tear-spurge wan, with love-wort blood-wort burning red:
• Alas! if only ever such a pillow could
• Steep deep your life the soul in sleep till it she were dead,—
• Better the very soul cease all life forget her than this thing,
• That Willowwood should hold your her wandering!”
Added Text
Alas! if ever such a pillow could
Give rest at all to any weary head,
O God alone unknown, the God of good,
How should it be till brain & soul were dead!

    Scribe: DGR

• What withering foulness in life's smouldering obsolete transitive senses in life's death's sick delay
• Or seizure of malign vicissitude
• Can rob this body of honour, or denude
• This soul of wedding-raiment, worn today?
• For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
• With these my lips such jubilant consonant interlude
• As mighty laurelled Orpheus won not longed for when he wooed
• The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
• As never yet Apollo's mastering word
• Won from the winds to yield his roundelay
• As never Orpheus love-bewildered word
• Won from his love with that last roundelay

• I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
• 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
• A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
• A god when these our all our life-breath s met to fan
• Our The Our life-blood, till the imperial love's emulous immingling ambrosial affluent Love's orient ardours ran,
• Fire within fire, desire in deity.

    Scribe: DGR

• So sang he: and as meeting rose & rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway,
• Nor fell at once, yet near the end of day
• The leaves drop loosened till the heart-stain flows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And the her face fell back drowned, and in the grey
• Still water nothing but my own face lay:
• How thence I went, I know not if Love knows.

• I know that here in Willowwood I shall fare
• 10 With her the parted paths For ever to and fro, but here no spell
• To find again with her the vanished well:
• And in what glade she waits, and holds her hair
• Aside, and listens to the sunken air,
• The talking willows know but may not tell.

    Scribe: DGR

• So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway
• Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
• The leaves drop loosened till the heart-stain flows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And her face fell back drowned, and in the grey and as it lay
• Of the water nothing but my own face lay:
  Added TextAnd [?] like the eyes the face grew grey
• How thence I went I know not if Love knows.

• I know that here in Willowwood I fare
• 10 For ever to and fro, but here no spell
• To find again with her To track my footprints to the vanished well:
• And in what glades glade s she waits seeks, and holds her hair
• Aside, and listens to the sunken air,
• The talking whispering willows know but may not tell.
• The willows & these waters may not tell.
• The whispers of these willows will not tell.
• The willows & these waters may not tell.

    Scribe: DGR

• So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
• Together cling through the wind's wellaway
• Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
• The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
• So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
• And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
• As its grey eyes; and if I it ever may
• Behold it more Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.

• Only I know that I leaned low and drank
• 10A long draught of from the water where she sank,
• Her breath and all her tears and all her her whole soul:
• And as I drank, I know I felt Love's face
• Laid on my neck Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
• Till both our heads were in his aureole.
Added Text
I know that here in Willowwood I fare
For ever to and fro, but here no spell
To track my footprints to the vanished well:
And in what glade she seeks, & holds her hair
Aside, and listens to the sunken air,
These whispering trees have heard but may not tell.

    Scribe: DGR

---

• O thou sad ghost “Thou Ghost,” I said, “and is thy name Today?—
• Yesterday's son, with such an beaten abject brow!—
• And can Tomorrow be more pale than thou?”
• While yet I spoke, the silence answered: “Yea,
• Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
• And each beforehand maketh make s vile such poor avow
• As of dead old leaves beneath the budding bough
• Or night-drift that the sunshine casts sundawn shreds away.”

• Then cried I: “Mother of many malisons,
• 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!”
• But therewithal the tremulous silence said:—
• “Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
• Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
• And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.”

---

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• What of her glass without her? The blank grey
• There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
• Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
• Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
• Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
• Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
• Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace,
• And cold forgetfulness of night or day.

• What of my the heart without her? Nay, my poor heart,
• 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
• A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
• Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
• Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
• Sheds doubled darkness o'er up the labouring hill.

---

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
• Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
• Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
• And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
• But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
• I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
• Vainly all night with spell- girt wrought power has spann'd
• The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.

• Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
• 10 Made moan : “Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!
• Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:
• And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,—
• Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,—
• Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.”

    Scribe: DGR

---

• The hour which might have been yet might not be,
• Which man's and woman's heart conceived & bore
• Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
• Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
• Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
• It somewhere sighs and serves, and standing mute before
• The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
• His hours elect in choral consonancy.

• But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
• 10 With blending footprints tread at last the strand
  Added TextTogether tread at last the immortal strand
• With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
• Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
• And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
• “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”

        Scribe: DGR

---

• To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
• A bodily beauty more acceptable
• Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
• To be an essance more environing
• Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
• More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
• To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
• That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!

• How strange a thing to be what Man can know
• 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
• Hides her soul's purest depth & loveliest glow;
• Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
• The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of green
• That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.

    Scribe: DGR

• She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
• And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
• A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
• Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
• That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
• And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
• Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
• For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.

• Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
• 10 And circling arms, she welcomes all command
• Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
• Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
• Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
• The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?

---

    Scribe: DGR

• If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
• (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
• With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
• True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung,
• Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
• Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
• About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
• Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.

• The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
• 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
• Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
• Even yet those lovers who have treasured still
• This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
• To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Love held to me to his singer held a glistening laurel leaf,
• And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
• Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
• And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
• Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
• Victorous Summer; yea aye, and 'neath warm sea
• Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
• Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

• All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
• 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
• But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
• From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
• Only this laurel dreads no winter days;
• It is my last gift, brother; sing my praise.”
• Added TextTake my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.”
• Take my last gift, for thou hast sung my praise
• O singer of my

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
• And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
• Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
• And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
• Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
• Victorous Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
• Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
• Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.

• All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
• 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
• But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
• From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
• Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
• Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.”

---

        Scribe: DGR

---

• As growth of form or momentary glance
• In a child's features will recall to mind
• The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
• Sweet interchange that memories still enhance: —
• And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
• The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
• And Till in the blended likeness now we find
• A separate man's or woman's countenance:—

• So in such wise So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
• 10 Song's Its very parents, 'neath his power evermore expand
• To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain symbolled growth fullgrown birth remain,
• By Art's transfiguring essance subtly spann'd;
• And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
• There comes the [?] sound as of abundant rain.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• As growth of form or momentary glance
• In a child's features will recall to mind
• The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
• Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
• And yet, as childhood's years & youth's advance,
• The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
• Till in the blended likeness now we find
• A separate man's or woman's countenance:—

• So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
• 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
• To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
• By Art's transfiguring essance subtly spann'd;
• And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
• There comes the sound as of abundant rain.

---

    Scribe: DGR

• By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
• O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
• Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
• Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
• Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
• Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
• Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst & sigh,
• That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

• The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
• 10 Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
• Fledges his shaft: to no transferred august control
• Of thy skilled hand 's skill his quivered store he gave:
• But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
• The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

    Scribe: DGR

---

• By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
• O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
• Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
• Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
• Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
• Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
• Than the d Dead s Sea for throats that thirst & sigh,
• That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.

• The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
• 10 Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
• Fledges his shaft: to no august control
• Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
• But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
• The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
• Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose pyre
• Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
• Who hath not yearned & fed his heart with thee?
• Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
• Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
• Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . . .
• Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!

• What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
• 10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
• Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd span,—
• Visons of golden features: or that last
• Wild pageant of the accumulated past
• That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• The changing guests, each in a different mood,
• Sit at the roadside table and arise:
• Are not their lives and thy life And every life among them, in likewise,
• Each Is a soul's board set daily with new food. ?
• What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
• How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
• Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
• Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

• May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
• 10 In separate living souls , for joy , for and or pain?
• Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
• Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
• And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
• Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
• And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
• And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
• And the mild fire of precious life grow wax warm;—
• So I, long bound within the mystic threefold charm
• Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood,
• Had questioned of the passionate attitude
  Added TextHad marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
• How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.

• At length within this book I found express pourtrayed
• 10 The first young image of that Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
• But And simple like a child; by with whose clear aid
• I understood. To such a child as this,
• Christ, charging well his chosen ones, forbade
• Offence: “for lo! of such my kingdom is.”

    Scribe: DGR

• The changing guests, each in a different mood,
• Sit at the roadside table and arise.
• Are not their lives and thy life, in likewise,
• Each a soul's board set daily with new food?
• What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
• How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
• Or thought, when as his own mother kissed his eyes,
• Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?

• May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
• 10 In seperate living souls for joy, and for pain?
• Yea Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
• Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
• And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
• Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• The cuckoo-throb, the first heartbeat of the Spring;
• The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
• Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
• The summer clouds that visit every wing
• With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
• The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
• 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
• While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—

• These ardour loves, These pleasure etc. and memory: and when flown
• 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
• The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
• Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
• Shall Will flush all ruddy when though the rose is be gone;
• With ditties and with dirges infinite.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
• Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
• The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
• Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
• With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
• Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
• In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
• Together, within hopeless sight of hope
• For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
• 10 When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
• After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
• Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
• Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
• Follow the desultory feet of Death?

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• O thou who at Love's hour unswervingly compassionately ecstatically
• Unto my lips dost evermore present,
• The body and blood of Love in Sacrament;
• Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
• The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
• Who without word in each pulse without speech hast owned him, and, intent
• Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
• And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!—

• O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
• 10 And what to him Love the glory,—when the whole
• Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim goal shoal
• And weary water of the place of sighs,
• And there dost work Love's wonder deliverance, as thine eyes
• Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• From child to youth; from youth to weary wavering arduous man;
• From lethargy energy to fever of the heart;
• From faithful life to mouldering dream-dowered days apart;
• From doubt to dread trust to doubt; from dread doubt to bale and brink of ban;—
• Thus much of change in thy one swift cycle ran
• Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
• Accept her primal immortality,—
• The flesh that dust wherein its course began?

• O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
• 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
• Even still yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
• That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
• The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
• This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

    Scribe: DGR

---

• From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
• From energy to fever of the heart;
• From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
• From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
• Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
• Till now. Alas! the soul—how soon must she
• Accept her primal immortality,—
• The flesh that dust wherein its course began?
• Added TextThe flesh resume its dust whence it began

• O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
• 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
• Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
• That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
• The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
• This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
• Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
• But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
• In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
• (And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
• Was that my point of turning?— I did think I had thought
• Added TextThe stations of my course should rise unsought,
• Proud [?] should mark my stations, link with link
• Proud [?] the stations of my should link
• As High altar-stone or ensigned citadel.

• But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
• 10 And thirst to drink when now next I reach the spring
• Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
• Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
• As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
• That the same goal is still on the same track.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• There came an image in Life's retinue
• That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
• Fair was the web, and sweetly nobly wrought thereon,
• O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
• Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
• Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
• Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
• When birth's harsh dark portal groaned and all was new.

• But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
• 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
• Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
• And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
• And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
• I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• The gloom which that breathes upon me with these airs
• Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
• Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
• Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
• Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
• Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
• Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when thou,
• O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

• How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
• 10 On crosswebbed Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
• Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
• Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
• Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
• Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
• Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
• But breathless with averted eyes elate
• She sits, with open lips and open ears,
• That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts & fears
• Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
• A central prisoned moan for days, at length found tongue,
• And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.

• But now, whatever while the soul is fain
• 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
• The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,—
• No breath of song,—thy voice alone is there,
• O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
• Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.

---

    Scribe: DGR

• This sunlight shames November where he grieves
• In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
• The day, though stem with stem be inter-run.
• But with a blessing every hold receives
• High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
• The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
• As if, being foresters of old, the sun
• Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.

• Here on some morn clear as a magic glass;
• 10 Might Rosalind stand listening in the dew
• Or earlier Griselda to field work pass
• Yet not as sullen as that single yew
• [?] I bring my shadows o'er the grass.
• Added TextMight Chaucer stop to listen in the dew
• Added TextOr earlier [???] to fieldwork pass
• Added TextAnd here the lost hours the lost hours renew
• Added TextWhile I still lead my shadow o'er the grass
• Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.

    Scribe: DGR

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• This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
• In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
• And I have loitered in the vale too long
• And gaze now a belated worshipper.
• Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
• So journeying, of his face at intervals,—
• Saw where the land to its horizon falls
• Some fiery bush with coruscating hair.

• And now that I have climbed & tread this height,
• 10 I may lie down where all the slope is shade
• And cover up my face and hair till night
• With silence darkness; or may here be stayed
• And see the gold air and the silver fade
• And the last bird fly into the last light.

---

    Scribe: DGR

• She hath it in her hand to give it thee the fruit within apple in her [?] hand for thee,
• Or She hath the apple in her hand for thee
• Yet questions in AndYet within almost in her heart to would hold it back;
• She muses, with her eyes upon the track
• Of some dazed moth or honey-seeking bee
  Added TextOf that which in thy spirit she can see.
• Haply, “ He is as one of these Behold, he is at peace,” saith she;
• “Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
• That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
• The wandering of his feet perpetually!”

• A little space her glance is still and coy;
• 10 But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
• Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
• Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell,
• And her far seas moan as a single shell,
• And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
• Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
• Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
• May pour for thee this yellow wine, brim-high,
• Till round the glass thy fingers look glow like gold.
• Then both hands oer my forehead thou shalt fold
• And listen to the silence going by.
• Added TextWe'll hear no hours: thy song, while those are toll'd,
• Added TextShall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.

• Wilt thou believe that O just conceive why there are really those,
• 10 My own high-bosomed lady, who increase
• Care, gold, and care, in search reach of our Love's [?] true wealth! ?
• Eleven long days they toil; upon the twelfth
• They die not, never having lived,—but cease;
• And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• Watch thou and fear; tomorrow thou shalt die.
• Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
• Is not the day which God's word promiseth
• To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
• Now while we speak, the sun sets forth: Can I
• Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
• Perchance even at the moment quickeneth
• The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
• Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
• 10 And dost thou prate of that which man shall do?
• Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
• Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
• Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
• Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
• And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
• And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
• And the mild fire of precious life wax warm:—
• So I, long bound within the threefold charm
• Of Dante's love sublimed to Heavenly mood,
• Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
• How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.
• At length within this book I found pourtrayed
• 10 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
• And simple like a child; with whose clear aid
• I understood. To such a child as this,
• Christ, charging well his chosen ones, forbade
• Offence: ‘for lo! of such my kingdom is.’

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
• Stretching thyself i' the sun upon the shore,
• Thou say'st: “Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
• Of all the his years, steeply, with pant and sigh,
• Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
• Even I, am he whom it was destined for.”
• How should this be? Art thou then so much more
• Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?

• Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
• 10 Unto the horizon-brim look thou with me;
• Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
• Miles and miles distant though the horizon be,
• And though thy thought sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
• Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
• From life; and mocking pulses that remain
• When the soul's death of bodily death is fain,
• Honour unfound unknown, and honour found known unsought;
• And sedulous penury's self-torturing thought
• On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
• And longed-for woman longing all in vain
• For lonely man with love's desire distraught; —
• Beholding And wealth, & strength, & power, & pleasantness,
• 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
• None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
• Beholding all I behold the sun confess
  Added TextBeholding these things, I behold no less
• At The blushing morn and blushing eve the stress confess
• Of The shame that loads the intolerable day.

---

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
• It was this Luke For he it was (the aged legends say,)
• Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
• Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
• Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
• How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
• Are symbols also in a some deeper way,
• She looked through these to God and was God's priest.

• And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
• 10And she sought shadows talismans, and had turned in vain
• To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
• Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
• Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
• Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

---

    Scribe: DGR

• Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
• For he it was (the aged legends say)
• Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
• Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
• Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
• How sky-breadth and field silence and this day
• Are symbols also in some deeper way,
• She looked through these to God & was God's priest.

• And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
• 10 And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
• To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
• Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
• Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
• Ere the night cometh and she may not work.

---

    Scribe: DGR

• “I am not as these are,” the poet saith
• When young, and the young painter, amid among men
• At bay, where neither never pencil comes [?] neither nor pen,
• And shut about with his own frozen breath.
• To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
• As singers,— only paint as painters,— proudly then
• He turns in the cold silence; and again
• Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.

• And say that this is so, what follows it?
• 10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
• These words were well; but they see on, and far.
• Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
• Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
• Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”

    Scribe: DGR

• Though God, as one that is an householder,
• Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
• Before the husk of darkness was well burst
• Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
• (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
• Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
• Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
• Though God hath since found none such as these were
• To do their work like them:—Because of this,
• 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
• Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
• Who may be first by faith and will?—that his
• Is not the hand which, after the set days ,
• Shall give a future to their goodly past?
  Added TextAnd hours, shall give a future to their past?

---

       

• Though God, as one that is an householder,
• Called these to labour in his vineyard first,
• Before the husk of darkness was well burst
• Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
• (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir
• Unto each man a penny:”) though the worst
• Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
• Though God hath since found none such as these were
• To do their work like them :—Because of this
• 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
• Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
• Who may be first by faith and will?— that yea, his
• Is notThe hand which after the set appointed days
• And hours shall give a Future to their Past?

    Scribe: DGR

• Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
• Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
• Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
• I drew it in as simply as my breath.
• Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
• The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
• By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
• The allotted bondman of her palm & wreath.

• This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
• 10 Thy voice & hand shake still,—long known to thee
• By flying hair & fluttering hem,—the beat
• Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
• How passionately & unappeasably irretrievably,
• In what fond flight, how many ways and days!

---

    Scribe: DGR

• Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
• (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
• That, ere the snake's her sweet tongue could deceive,
• And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
• And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
• And, subtly of herself contemplative,
• Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
• Till heart & body and life are in its hold.

• Rose, foxglove, poppy are her flowers; And for where
• 10 Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
• And soft-shed fingers and soft sleep shall snare?
• Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
• Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
• And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
• That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
• And by instinct ineffable decree
• Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
• Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
• That 'mid the tide of all emergency
• Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
• Its difficult eddies labour in the ground.

• Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
• 10The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
• The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
• That draws round me at last this wind warm space,
• And in regenerate rapture turns my face
• Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• As the child knows not if his mother's face
• Be fair; nor if his elders yet can deem
• What each most is; but as of hill or stream
• At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
• Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
• Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
• And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
• In things long past new features now can trace:—

• Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
• 10 Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
• And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
• And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
• Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
• Those unknown things or these things overknown.

    Scribe: May Morris

• What place so strange,—though unimagined/[?] unrevealàd snow
• With unimaginable fires arise
• At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
• Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
• Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
• This is the very place which to mine eyes
• Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
• 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.

• City, of thine a single simple door,
• 10 By some new power reduplicate, must be
• Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
• Even with one figure presence filled, as once of yore:
• Added TextEven with the presence filled which once it bore
• Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
• Thee and thy years and these my words and me.

    Scribe: DGR

---

• I said: “Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be:
• Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
• Yet it shall But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
• Sees in the stream its own fecundity
• And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
• At heat's high the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
• And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
• And eat it from the branch & praise the tree?”

• I say: “Alas! the our fruit hath wooed the sun
• 10 Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
• Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
• And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
• Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
• And the woods wail like echoes of from the sea.”
• Added TextTill music fainted on &
• Added TextOf autumn bid the drowsy forest dream
• Added TextOf the sea's sorrow and wail in unison.

    Scribe: DGR

• The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
• There where the sea-flowers screen the burial-caves
• Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd
• Till music sweetness failed along against the inveterate waves
• Say, Song Soul, are songs of d Death no heaven to thee
• Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
• And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
• And now before and now again behind
• Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
• So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
• No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
• With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
• And whom today the Spring no more concerns.

• Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
• 10 This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
• To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
• Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
• Nor gaze till on the year's last lily-stem
• The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

    Scribe: DGR

---

• Sweet stream-fed glen, why say “farewell” to thee
• Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
• The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
• Nay, do thou rather say “farewell” to me,
• For I Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
• Than when, where other trees might shade & soothe
• By other streams in fragrant days of youth,
• The bliss of being sad made melancholy.

• And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
• 10 When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
• And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
• In hours to come, than when an hour ago
• Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
• And thy breeze trees whispered what he feared to know.

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    Scribe: DGR     Scribe: DGR

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• What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
• Not one of all the sins, and each fair deed
  Added TextNone of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
• Long firm, which Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
• These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
• Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
• Together now, in shapely quivering close-drawn snake-bound shuddering sheaves
• Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves
• Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

• Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit,
• 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
• Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair And as the fair
• fouled wretches sink etc And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
• To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife,
• The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• So their lips drew asunder, with fierce sweet smart:
• And like as the last slow sudden rain drops are shed
• From sparkling eaves when all the short storm has fled,
• So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
• Then their close bosoms sundered at one start,
• As when a flower bursts open on its bed
• From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
• Chirped at each other where they lay apart.

• Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
• 10 And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
• Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
• Of watered light, and dull drowned waifs of day:
• Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
• He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

---

       

• What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
• None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
• Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
• These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
• Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
• Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
• Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom pit's pollution leaves
• Their refuse maidenhood abominable.

• Night sucks them down, the garbage tribute of the pit,
• 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
• Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
• And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
• To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier destined wife,
• The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.

    Scribe: DGR

---

        Scribe: DGR

• When first that horse, within whose populous womb
• The birth was Death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
• Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
• Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
• She whispered, “Friends, I am here alone; come, come!”
• Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
• And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
• His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.

• The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
• 10 Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
• Till sweetness failed along the sapphire inveterate sea. . . .
• Say, soul,— and doth no fatal song for us
• Prove yet than all the seas any crown more rapturous,
• No death's lip shame the cheek of victory?

---

    Scribe: May Morris

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• That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name tonight,
• O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
• Tomorrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
• To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
• Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
• On ebbing storm & life twice ebb'd must break;
• While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
• Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.

• That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
• 10 Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
• Till some one man the happy issue see
• Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
• Which still may rest unfir'd; for mine theirs or thine,
• O brother, what brought Love to thee or me them or thee?

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    Scribe: DGR

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• The weltering London ways where children weep,
• Where And girls whom none call maidens laugh, and while where gain
• Arrests men's steps to lordship or disdain
• Added TextAllures men's hurrying steps, their loss to attain:
Added Text
. . . . . laugh; the lane
Between the hospital beds of moaning pain:
• The brink of Castaly bright Castalian brink, and Latmos' steep:—
• Such were his paths, till deeper & more deep
• He trod the sands of Lethe, and his brain,
• Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
• Drowsed where the shadows of dead Rome wrap his sleep.

• O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
• 10And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,—
• Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,—
• To us thou leav'st this fragrance, and a name
• Not writ but quired choir'd rumoured in water, where while thy fame
• Echoes along Time's flood for evermore.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; & ye
• Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
• And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
• A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
• Of some inexorable irrevocable supremacy
• Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
• From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
• Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?

• Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
• 10 The upheaved storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown today
• Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
• Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
• Those stars, that through his springtime/ [?] watch the oak
• When e'er his gnarled boughs shrink shall hold their way
Added Text
Added TextThose stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall wage
Their journey still when his gnarled boughs shrink with age.

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    Scribe: DGR

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• Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
• Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
• Is caught down from out his chariot by the hair,
• So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
• Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
• Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
• It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
• Get thee behind me, Satan. Gilt and pearled Oft unfurled,
• Thy speech is like the rich simoom which hath
• Added TextThy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
• 10 Within its vortex [?] and gold yet slays
  Added TextMuch mightiness of men to win thee praise.
• [?] Oft unfurled,
• Thy horrible/perilous wings shall beat & break like lath
• Much strength of mightiness of mighty men to win thee praise
• Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
• Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
• Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
• Many years, many months, and many days.

    Scribe: DGR

• Because our talk had been of Love's control
• And Hope's enthrallment and the face of Fate,
• Her pitying kisses faltered at the gate
• And her eyes dreamed towards a distant goal:
• But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
• Of Joy, which its own hours annihilate,
• Her deep gaze hankered, thirstier than of late,
• And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.

• Thence in what years we wandered & how strove
• 10 To build from those poor [?]ing hours up fire-tried hours [?] jealous the home
• Where outcast lifelong memory yet should roam
• They only know for whom the House of Love
• Could [?] the still-seated secret of the grove
  Added TextCould [?] secret of the grove,
  Added Text[???]
• Nor spire may reach/rise nor bell be heard therefrom.
• Added TextThence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
• Added TextTo build with fire-tried vows the perilous piteous home
• Where outcast lifelong memory yet should roam
• Added TextWhich memory haunts and whither sleep may roam,—
• Added TextThey only know for whom the House of Love
• Added TextIs the still-seated secret of the grove,
• Added TextNor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.

    Scribe: DGR

---

• As when two men have loved a woman well,
• Each hating each, and all in self deceit through Love's and Death's deceit;
• Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
• And the long pauses of this wedding-bell:
• Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
• At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
• Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
• The two lives left that most of her can tell:—

• So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
• 10 The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
• And Peace before their faces perished since:
• So in through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
• Where silence may not be, they They roam together now, and wind among
• Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• There came an image in Life's retinue
• That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
• [?] he spread it in the Sun
  Added TextFair was the web, and well pourtrayed thereon,
• Bright was the web and sweet the wind it blew
• One soul sequestered face's form and hue
  Added TextO soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
• Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
• Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
• Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
• When birth's dark harsh portal groaned and all was new.
• When shuddering portals groaned & birth won through.

• But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
• 10 The banner round its staff, to swath furl and cling,—
• Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
• And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
• And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
• Look [?] and thine for I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”

---

        Scribe: DGR

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• Beholding youth & hope in mockery caught
• From life; and mocking pulses that remain
• When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
• Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
• And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
• On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
• And longed-for woman longing all in vain
• For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
• And wealth, and strength, & power, & pleasantness,
• 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
• None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
• Beholding these things, I behold no less
• The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
• The shame that loads the intolerable day.

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    Scribe: DGR

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• As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
• Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
• May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,—
• “Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
• Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;”—
• Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
• And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
• The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—

• Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World
• 10 Perchance one hour must cry: “Woe's me, for whom
• Added TextInveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
• Dread change portends the irrevocable doom
• Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd:
• While thou even as of yore art journeying,
• All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!”

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• Great Michel Angelo, with age grown bleak,
• And uttermost labours, having wholly said once o'ersaid
• All grievous memories on his long life shed,
• This worst regret to one true heart could speak;—
• That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
• He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
• His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,—
• Her dear pale lips he kissed not, but her cheek.
• Added TextHer hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.

• O Buonarruoti,—good at the Sun's wheels Art's fire-wheels
• 10 That guides his To urge her chariot!— even thus the Soul,
• Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
• Earns oftenest but a little: oftenest her appeals
• Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
• What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• Around the vase of Life at your slow pace
• He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
• And all its sides already understands.
• There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
• Whose road runs far by sands & fruitful space;
• Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
• Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
• A youth, stands somewhere [?] crowned, with silent face.

• And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
• 10 With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
• With watered flowers for buried love most fit;
• And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
• Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
• Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.

---

    Scribe: DGR

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• Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
• I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
• Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
• Cast up thy Life's embittered leaves foam- covered fretted feet between;
• Unto thine eyes the glass where life that is seen
• Which once had its Life's Love's own form had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
• Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
• Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

• Mark me, how still I am: but if should there dart
• 10 One moment through thy soul the sweet soft surprize
• Of that soft wing ed Peace which [?]/bears the sleep lulls the breath of sighs,—
• Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
• Thy visage to the mine ambush at the thy heart
• Made Held Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

    Scribe: May Morris

---

• As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
• Somewhile unto thy sight must needs have perchance hath been
• Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
• In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
• As thy love's death-bound features never dead
• To memory's glass return, but contravene
• Frail fugitive days, and alway keep, I ween,
• Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—

• So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
• 10 Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger
• Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
• Though pale she lay when in the winter grove
• Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
• And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.

---

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
• I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
• Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea shell
• Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
• Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
• Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
• Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
• Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

• Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
• 10 One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
• Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,—
• Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
• Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
• Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• Whence came his feet into my field, and why?
• How is it that he sees it all so drear?
• How do I see his seeing, and how hear
• The name his bitter silence [?] knows it by?
• This was the little fold of separate sky
• Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere
• Drew living light from one continual year:
• How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?

• Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,
• 10 With plaints for every flower, and for each tree
• A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary:
• And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield
• Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd,
• Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.

        Scribe: DGR

---

• Today Death seems to me a newborn an infant child
• Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
• Has set to grow my friend & play with me;
• If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
• To find no terrors in a face so mild,
• But made [?] with fatality
  Added TextIf haply so my weary heart might be
• May never any more be moved to flee
  Added TextUnto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
• From those now [?] eyes grown wide and wild.
  Added TextO Death, before resentment reconcil'd.

• How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
• 10 Still a young child's with mine , ? —or wilt thou stand
• Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
• What time with thee at length indeed I reach the strand
• Of that the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
• And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

---

    Scribe: DGR

Added Text
And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss by whom such artifice the lady of all bliss,
With whom when these our hearts beat full & fast
Added TextWith whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
I [?] wandered till the haunts of men were past,
• And in rich fair places found all bowers amiss
• Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
• While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
• Ah! Life, and must I have from thee at last
• No smile to greet me & no babe but this?

• Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
• 10 Blew like a flame & blossomed like a wreath;
• And Art, whose eyes made glance shaped God & formed him fair;
Added Text
whose eyes were as God's skies laid bare;
whose eyes were worlds by God found fair;
whose [?] glance met God's and formed them Him fair;
whose wondering eyes made wondrous fair
Added Textwith wondrous wondering eyes most fair
with wondrous eyes of wondering prayer
whose glance shaped gods and formed them fair
• These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
• With heart-locked hands [?] locked [?] neck-twined arms , as oft we watched them there:
• And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
• With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
• I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
• And in fair places found all bowers amiss
• Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
• While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
• Ah! Life, and must I have from thee at last
• No smile to greet me and no babe but this?

• Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
• 10 Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
• And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair:
• These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
• With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there;
• And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?

    Scribe: Charles Fairfax Murray

• When vain desire at last and vain regret
• Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
• What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
• And teach the unforgetful to forget?
• Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,—
• Or may the soul at once in a green plain
• Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain
• And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?

• Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air
• 10 Between the scriptured petals softly blown
• Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown,—
• Ah! let none other alien spell soe'er
• But only the one Hope's one name be there,—
• Nor less nor more, but even that word alone.

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