I know as well as I know to pray, Thomas Bailey Aldrich [1837-1907] THE SHADOW DANCE SHE sees her image in the glass,-- Like winds across the meadow grass She sees her image in the glass,- What wealth of gold the skies amass! Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908 "ALONG THE FIELD AS WE CAME BY" ALONG the field as we came by A year ago, my love and I, The aspen over stile and stone Was talking to itself alone. "Oh, who are these that kiss and pass? A country lover and his lass; Two lovers looking to be wed; And time shall put them both to bed, But she shall lie with earth above, And he beside another love." "Grieve Not, Ladies " And sure enough beneath the tree Alfred Edward Housman [1859 857 "WHEN I WAS ONE-AND-TWENTY" WHEN I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, When I was one-and-twenty And I am two-and-twenty, Alfred Edward Housman [1859– "GRIEVE NOT, LADIES" Он, grieve not, Ladies, if at night It was a web of frail delight, In other eyes, in other lands, In deep fair pools new beauty lingers; But like spent water in your hands It runs from your reluctant fingers. You shall not keep the singing lark That owes to earlier skies its duty. Weep not to hear along the dark The sound of your departing beauty. The fine and anguished ear of night It may not seem so gone to-morrow. But honey-pale and rosy-red! Brief lights that make a little shining! Beautiful looks about us shed They leave us to the old repining. Think not the watchful, dim despair Has come to you the first, sweet-hearted! For oh, the gold in Helen's hair! And how she cried when that departed! Perhaps that one that took the most, The swiftest borrower, wildest spender, May count, as we would not, the costAnd grow more true to us and tender. Happy are we if in his eyes We see no shadow of forgetting. Nay if our star sinks in those skies We shall not wholly see its setting. Then let us laugh as do the brooks, That such immortal youth is ours, If memory keeps for them our looks As fresh as are the springtime flowers. Suburb So grieve not, Ladies, if at night Ye wake to feel the cold December!: And in your loved one's arms, remember. 859 T SUBURB DULL and hard the low wind creaks Among the rustling pampas plumes. Its fifty-two insipid weeks. Most of the gray-green meadow land The dingy houses stand Pressed by some stout contractor's hand Tightly together in their plots. Through builded banks the sullen river Gropes, where its houses crouch and shiver. Shrieks, and emerges on the plain. In all the better gardens you may pass, Sometimes in the background may be seen A private summer-house in white or green. Here on warm nights the daughter brings. Her vacillating clerk, To talk of small exciting things And touch his fingers through the dark. He, in the uncomfortable breach Between her trilling laughters, Promises, in halting speech, Hopeless immense Hereafters. She trembles like the pampas plumes. Now as the train is whistling past It's done. She blushes at his side The stout contractor will design, Pampas grass will rustle there. Harold Monro [1879 THE BETROTHED "You must choose between me and your cigar OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out. We quarreled about Havanas-we fought o'er a good cheroot And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. Open the old cigar-box-let me consider a space, In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's face. Maggie is pretty to look at-Maggie's a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass. There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay, But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away— Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I never could throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town! |