THE LINNET

Upon this leafy bush
  With thorns and roses in it,
Flutters a thing of light,
  A twittering linnet. 
And all the throbbing world
  Of dew and sun and air
By this small parcel of life
  Is made more fair;
As if each bramble-spray
And mounded gold-wreathed furze,
  Harebell and little thyme,
  Were only hers;
As if this beauty and grace
  Did to one bird belong,
And, at a flutter of wing,
  Might vanish in song.

THE SUNKEN GARDEN

Speak not—­whisper not;
Here bloweth thyme and bergamot;
Softly on the evening hour,
Secret herbs their spices shower. 
Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh,
Lean-stalked, purple lavender;
Hides within her bosom, too,
All her sorrows, bitter rue.

Breathe not—­trespass not;
Of this green and darkling spot,
Latticed from the moon’s beams,
Perchance a distant dreamer dreams;
Perchance upon its darkening air,
The unseen ghosts of children fare,
Faintly swinging, sway and sweep,
Like lovely sea-flowers in its deep;
While, unmoved, to watch and ward,
Amid its gloomed and daisied sward,
Stands with bowed and dewy head
That one little leaden Lad.

THE RIDDLERS

“Thou solitary!” the Blackbird cried,
“I, from the happy Wren,
Linnet and Blackcap, Woodlark, Thrush,
Perched all upon a sweetbrier bush,
Have come at cold of midnight-tide
To ask thee, Why and when
Grief smote thy heart so thou dost sing
In solemn hush of evening,
So sorrowfully, lovelorn Thing—­
Nay, nay, not sing, but rave, but wail,
Most melancholic Nightingale? 
Do not the dews of darkness steep
All pinings of the day in sleep? 
Why, then, when rocked in starry nest
We mutely couch, secure, at rest,
Doth thy lone heart delight to make
Music for sorrow’s sake?”
A Moon was there.  So still her beam,
It seemed the whole world lay in dream,
Lulled by the watery sea. 
And from her leafy night-hung nook
Upon this stranger soft did look
The Nightingale:  sighed he:—­

“’Tis strange, my friend; the Kingfisher
But yestermorn conjured me here
Out of his green and gold to say
Why thou, in splendour of the noon,
Wearest of colour but golden shoon,
And else dost thee array
In a most sombre suit of black? 
‘Surely,’ he sighed, ’some load of grief,
Past all our thinking—­and belief—­
Must weigh upon his back!’
Do, then, in turn, tell me, If joy
Thy heart as well as voice employ
Why dost thou now most Sable, shine
In plumage woefuller far than mine? 
Thy silence is a sadder thing
Than any dirge I sing!”