F. Hemans.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
V.
Half covered with last year’s leaves,
She peeped from her russet bed;
The great bare branches of the trees
Were tossed and swayed overhead;
The hedge looked barren and prickly,
Without the sign of a leaf;
Over the flower there bowed a heart
Grown cold with the snows of grief.
The violet’s fragile petals
Enfolded a heart of gold,
And a deeper wealth of perfume,
Than the tiny cup could hold;
So the great wind roaring above
Sent a tiny zephyr down,
To drift aside the sheltering bloom,
And bereave her of her crown.
It stole the familiar scent,
To give to the burdened heart
With only a cold north wind
In the world to take its part;
The flower died in the bleak March air,
And the heart went on its way;
The violet’s life was blooming there,
And melting the snows away.
Caris Brooke.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
VI.
Yet nature holds a gracious hand,
Her ancient ways pursuing;
And spreads the charms we loved of old,
To aid the heart’s renewing.
Here her long crests of fringed crag
Allure the skyward swallows;
Here the still dove’s low love-note floats
Above her leafy hollows.
Here its calm strength her hillside rears,
From heaving slopes of clover;
Here still the pewit pipes and flits
Within his furzy cover.
Here hums the wild-bee in the thyme,
Here glows the royal heather;
And youth comes back upon the breeze,
And youth’s unclouded weather.
F.T. Palgrave.
[Illustration: Here hums the wild bee in the thyme]
[Illustration]
VII.
An Appeal.
Dear, do not die!
Of cypresses and grassy graves sing I—
I hang with wreaths of song death’s grief-grown
cross,
And weep, to music, for Life’s infinite loss,
And make the sweetest verse of bitterest woe,
—I know the way because I love you so;
But I have written griefs that I have known
In other’s heart’s blood, never in my
own.
If you died what more could be sung or said?
I could not sing of Death if you were dead.
Dear, do not love!
Do not love me, keep still aloof, above!
While you and Love in far-off glory stand
Clear sounds the voice, and harp responds to hand.
But if you loved me—if you came quite near
And set Love ’mid life’s common things
and dear—
Mute would the voice be, Love would be too fair
To waste upon the wide world’s empty air,
And, songless, I should droop and vainly pine—
I could not sing of Love if you were mine!
E. Nesbit.
[Illustration.]
VIII.