SONNET XVI.

LIFE-IN-LOVE.

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 and 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 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.

SONNET XVII.

THE LOVE-MOON.

'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 ?'

'Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well

Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd

Two very voices of thy summoning bell.

Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest In these the culminant changes which approve The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?'

SONNET XVIII.

THE MORROW'S MESSAGE.

'THOU Ghost,' I said, ' and is thy name To-day?—
Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!—
And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?'
While yet I spoke, the silence answered: 'Yea,
Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
And each beforehand makes such poor avow
As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away.'
Then cried I: 'Mother of many malisons,

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.’

SONNET XIX.

SLEEPLESS DREAMS.

GIRT in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
O night desirous as the nights of youth!
Why should my heart 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 deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee

Some 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?

SONNET XX.

SECRET PARTING.

BECAUSE Our talk was of the cloud-control

And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate

And her
eyes dreamed against 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
To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home

Which memory haunts and 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.