But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
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.

SONNET XV.

THE BIRTH-BOND.

HAVE you not noted, in some family

Where two were born of a first marriage-bed, How still they own their gracious bond, though fed And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?— 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,
That among souls allied to mine was yet

One nearer kindred than life hinted of.

O born with me somewhere that men forget, And though in years of sight and sound unmet, Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!

SONNET XVI.

A DAY OF LOVE.

THOSE envied places which do know her well,
And are so scornful of this lonely place,
Even now for once are emptied of her grace :
Nowhere but here she is: and 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 sweet confederate music favorable.

Now many memories make solicitous

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.

SONNET XVII.

BEAUTY'S PAGEANT.

WHAT dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
Incarnate flower of culminating day,-

What marshalled marvels on the skirts 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 and elect disguise

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.

SONNET XVIII.

GENIUS IN BEAUTY.

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,

But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong Even through all change the indomitable song; So in likewise the envenomed whose tooth

years,

Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.

SONNET XIX.

SILENT NOON.

YOUR hands lie open in the long fresh

grass,

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms: Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams at glooms

'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. 'T is visible silence, still as the hour-glass. Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly Hangs 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.

SONNET XX.

GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT.

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 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,
There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
With flowering rush and sceptred 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.

SONNET XXI.

LOVE-SWEETNESS.

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 thy 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

In lacking which all these would lose their sweet :--
The confident heart's still fervor: 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?

SONNET XXII.

HEART'S HAVEN.

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 ills the fortified strong place
And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.

And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
Lulls us to rest with songs, and 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 spirits chime our roundelay.

SONNET XXIII.

LOVE'S BAUBLES.

I STOOD where Love in brimming armfuls bore
Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit :
And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store.
And from one hand the petal and the core

Savored 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 :
And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
And as I took them, at her touch they shone
With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.

And then Love said: "Lo! when the hand is hers,
Follies of love are love's true ministers."

SONNET XXIV.

PRIDE OF YOUTH.

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-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.