Why lingerest thou, filling with wandering fears
My lone love’s tired heart; her eyes with tears
For thoughts like sorrow for the vanished years? 
Weaver of ill thoughts, when wilt thou be gone?

THE MAIDENS

Love, to the east are thine eyes turned as mine,
In patient watching for the night’s decline? 
And hast thou noted this grey widening line? 
Can any darkness keep us long alone?

THE YOUTHS

O day, O day, is it a little thing
That thou so long unto thy life must cling,
Because I gave thee such a welcoming?

I called thee king of all felicity,
I praised thee that thou broughtest joy so nigh;
Thine hours are turned to years, thou wilt not die;
O day so longed for, would that thou wert gone!

THE MAIDENS

The light fails, love; the long day soon shall be
Nought but a pensive happy memory
Blessed for the tales it told to thee and me. 
How hard it was, O love, to be alone.

LOVE FULFILLED

Hast thou longed through weary days
For the sight of one loved face? 
Hast thou cried aloud for rest,
Mid the pain of sundering hours;
Cried aloud for sleep and death,
Since the sweet unhoped for best
Was a shadow and a breath? 
O, long now, for no fear lowers
O’er these faint feet-kissing flowers. 
O, rest now; and yet in sleep
All thy longing shalt thou keep.

Thou shalt rest and have no fear
Of a dull awaking near,
Of a life for ever blind,
Uncontent and waste and wide. 
Thou shalt wake and think it sweet
That thy love is near and kind. 
Sweeter still for lips to meet;
Sweetest that thine heart doth hide
Longing all unsatisfied
With all longing’s answering
Howsoever close ye cling.

Thou rememberest how of old
E’en thy very pain grew cold,
How thou might’st not measure bliss
E’en when eyes and hands drew nigh. 
Thou rememberest all regret
For the scarce remembered kiss. 
The lost dream of how they met,
Mouths once parched with misery. 
Then seemed Love born but to die,
Now unrest, pain, bliss are one,
Love, unhidden and alone.

THE KING OF DENMARK’S SONS

In Denmark gone is many a year, So fair upriseth the rim of the sun, Two sons of Gorm the King there were, So grey is the sea when day is done.

Both these were gotten in lawful bed
Of Thyrre Denmark’s Surety-head.

Fair was Knut of face and limb
As the breast of the Queen that suckled him.

But Harald was hot of hand and heart
As lips of lovers ere they part.

Knut sat at home in all men’s love,
But over the seas must Harald rove.