Only a little longer; then we rose
With limbs refreshed, and kept a swinging pace
Toward Corinth; but our talk, I know not why,
Fell for that day.  I wonder what there was
About those dainty lovers or their speech,
That changed Euktemon’s mood; for all the way
From high Cleonae to the city gates,
Till sunset found us loitering without aim,
Half lost among the dusky-moving crowds,
I could get nothing from him but dark looks,
Short answers and the old defiant stride. 
Some memory pricked him.  It may be, perchance,
A woman’s treachery, some luckless passion,
In former days endured, hath seared his blood,
And dowered him with that cureless bitter humour. 
To him solitude and the wanderer’s life
Alone are sweet, the tumults of this world
A thing unworthy of the wise man’s touch,
Its joys and sorrows to be met alike
With broad-browed scorn.  One quality at least
We have in common; we are idlers both,
Shifters and wanderers through this sleepless world,
Albeit in different moods.  ’Tis that, I think,
That knit us, and the universal need
For near companionship.  Howe’er it be,
There is no hand that I would gladlier grasp,
Either on earth or in the nether gloom,
When the grey keel shall grind the Stygian strand,
Than stern Euktemon’s.

II.

SONNETS

LOVE-DOUBT

Yearning upon the faint rose-curves that flit
  About her child-sweet mouth and innocent cheek,
  And in her eyes watching with eyes all meek
The light and shadow of laughter, I would sit
Mute, knowing out two souls might never knit;
  As if a pale proud lily-flower should seek
  The love of some red rose, but could not speak
One word of her blithe tongue to tell of it.

For oh, my Love was sunny-lipped and stirred
  With all swift light and sound and gloom not long
Retained; I, with dreams weighed, that ever heard
  Sad burdens echoing through the loudest throng
She, the wild song of some May-merry bird;
  I, but the listening maker of a song.

PERFECT LOVE

Beloved, those who moan of love’s brief day
  Shall find but little grace with me, I guess,
  Who know too well this passion’s tenderness
To deem that it shall lightly pass away,
A moment’s interlude in life’s dull play;
  Though many loves have lingered to distress,
  So shall not ours, sweet Lady, ne’ertheless,
But deepen with us till both heads be grey.

For perfect love is like a fair green plant,
  That fades not with its blossoms, but lives on,
And gentle lovers shall not come to want,
  Though fancy with its first mad dream be gone;
Sweet is the flower, whose radiant glory flies,
But sweeter still the green that never dies.