[Illustration:]

     TIME AND LOVE.

     Time flies.  The swift hours hurry by
       And speed us on to untried ways;
     New seasons ripen, perish, die,
       And yet love stays. 
     The old, old love—­like sweet, at first,
       At last like bitter wine—­
     I know not if it blest or curst
       Thy life and mine.

     Time flies.  In vain our prayers, our tears! 
       We cannot tempt him to delays;
     Down to the past he bears the years,
       And yet love stays. 
     Through changing task and varying dream
       We hear the same refrain,
     As one can hear a plaintive theme
       Run through each strain.

     Time flies.  He steals our pulsing youth;
       He robs us of our care-free days;
     He takes away our trust and truth: 
       And yet love stays. 
     O Time! take love!  When love is vain,
       When all its best joys die—­
     When only its regrets remain—­
       Let love, too, fly.

     [Illustration:  TIME AND LOVE]

     CHANGE.

     Changed?  Yes, I will confess it—­I have changed. 
       I do not love in the old fond way. 
     I am your friend still—­time has not estranged
       One kindly feeling of that vanished day.

     But the bright glamour which made life a dream,
       The rapture of that time, its sweet content,
     Like visions of a sleeper’s brain they seem—­
       And yet I cannot tell you how they went.

     Why do you gaze with such accusing eyes
       Upon me, dear?  Is it so very strange
     That hearts, like all things underneath God’s skies
       Should sometimes feel the influence of change?

     The birds, the flowers, the foliage of the trees,
       The stars which seem so fixed and so sublime,
     Vast continents and the eternal seas—­
       All these do change with ever-changing time.

     The face our mirror shows us year on year
       Is not the same; our dearest aim or need,
     Our lightest thought or feeling, hope or fear,
       All, all the law of alteration heed.

     How can we ask the human heart to stay
       Content with fancies of Youth’s earliest hours? 
     The year outgrows the violets of May,
       Although, maybe, there are no fairer flowers.

     And life may hold no sweeter love than this,
       Which lies so cold, so voiceless, and so dumb. 
     And shall I miss it, dear?  Why, yes, we miss
       The violets always—­till the roses come!

     DESOLATION.

     I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain
       Of love unrequited, or cold death’s woe,
       Is sweet compared to that hour when we know
     That some grand passion is on the wane;

     When we see that the glory and glow and grace
       Which lent a splendor to night and day
       Are surely fading, and showing the gray
     And dull groundwork of the commonplace;