III.

THE SECOND VALENTINE.

O LONG-EXPECTED! art thou here once more, Herald of happy spring, and Love's own day? Is it thy voice I hear without my door,

Bidding me tell what I would have thee say

When to my heart's hope thou hast found thy

way,

Whom, new-awaken, thou dost haste to greet

With wooing speeches and love-tokens meet?

Ah! surely now thou comest but in vain,

Since vainly didst thou come a year agone: Why wilt thou wake my foolish song again ? Knowing that I no art of Orpheus own,

To outcharm a Siren or to move a stoneI, a poor rimer of these later days,

Whose strong heart beats not in my feeble lays.

Oh! did I dream, or did I twice begin

Some dawning change in her calm eyes to see?

Alas! for she has "turned about to win

Once more an unblest woeful victory,"* And I—no heavenly hand has given to me Such threefold charm wherewith Milanion stayed The windshod feet of Arcady's fair maid.

Yet natheless this third time will I cast
My heart's love at her feet, while yet I may,
If haply it will please her at the last

From her ungentleness awhile to stay,
Gather the fair fruit lying in her way,

Grasp the sweet toy whose charm shall never tire,
And gain the bliss "all women most desire.Ӡ

Yes, haste, O kindly day, and tell her this,
And with the first breath of returning spring
Softly do thou her cheek's faint flushes kiss

* Morris, Atalanta's Race.

+ In Gower's Tale of Florent (Confessio Amantis, bk. i.) the hero has to discover "what alle women most desire." answer is

The

The same legend is the subject of Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale."

And therewith to her thought the memory bring
Of shadowy elm and rosebush blossoming,

And ask her then what new felicity

She wins from these brief days so changed to me.

Maybe that they are changed some fault was mine Of unripe hope and overloving word.

Oh! tell her that forgiveness is divine :

Have I, whose love was great, so greatly erred
That even thy pleading voice must be unheard,
Her eyes unmoved for aught that I can say,
And all my life as this sad winter's day?

1874.

IV.

TWO PROVERBS.

We sat and watched the flickering daylight die,
From underneath the rose-festooned verandah,
And fell to talk of proverbs, she and I,

I and Fanchette' (mutata sunt mutanda).

"Yes, they are strangely wise," I said, “and yet

'Twixt two there seems a wondrous inconsistence : D'you think that hearts grow more akin, Fanchette, In 'inverse ratio to their square of distance'?"

She was not mathematically inclined,

She said; indeed, my meaning was beyond her. "Well then, is 'out of sight' quite 'out of mind,'

Or think you 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'?

"Both can't be true. I doubt but you'll forget
One absent friend at latest ere December."
"Our country life is quiet," said Fanchette,

"I have not much to do save to remember.

"But you, who mingle with the busy throng,
You" thereupon I stopped her in the middle.
Fanchette," I said, "Time answers nothing wrong,
So let us wait for Time to rede our riddle."

Brief while to wait-the leaves were scarcely thin, Summer's last rose was scarcely yet a-dying, When Time his weird solution handed in, Affirming both, yet each apart denying.

For I no limits to my love assigned,

But hers within her eyes' patrol must wander: She found that 'out of sight is out of mind,'

And I that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder.'

Ay, there's the pity. Evil proverbs both!
If either were more false or either truer,

A little lief had not been turned to loth,*

And weary hearts had been by one heart fewer.

1874.

* Gower, Confessio Amantis, bk. i. :—

"Wherof the lief is after lothe."