Among the summer woodlands wide
  Anew she roams, no more alone;
The joy she feared is at her side,
  Spring’s blushing secret now is known. 
  The primrose and its mates have flown,
The thrush’s ringing note hath died;
  But glancing eye and glowing tone
Fall on her from her god, her guide. 
  She knows not, asks not, what the goal,
    She only feels she moves towards bliss,
  And yields her pure unquestioning soul
    To touch and fondling kiss.

And still she haunts those woodland ways,
  Though all fond fancy finds there now
To mind of spring or summer days,
  Are sodden trunk and songless bough. 
  The past sits widowed on her brow,
Homeward she wends with wintry gaze,
  To walls that house a hollow vow,
To hearth where love hath ceased to blaze;
  Watches the clammy twilight wane,
    With grief too fixed for woe or tear;
  And, with her forehead ’gainst the pane,
    Envies the dying year.

ALFRED AUSTIN.

THE SUN-DIAL.

’T is an old dial, dark with many a stain;
  In summer crowned with drifting orchard bloom,
Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain,
  And white in winter like a marble tomb.

And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
  Lean letters speak,—­a worn and shattered row: 
=I am a Shade; a Shadowe too art thou: 
  I marke the Time:  saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?=

Here would the ring-doves linger, head to head;
  And here the snail a silver course would run,
Beating old Time; and here the peacock spread
  His gold-green glory, shutting out the sun.

The tardy shade moved forward to the noon;
  Betwixt the paths a dainty Beauty stept,
That swung a flower, and, smiling hummed a tune,—­
  Before whose feet a barking spaniel leapt.

O’er her blue dress an endless blossom strayed;
  About her tendril-curls the sunlight shone;
And round her train the tiger-lilies swayed,
  Like courtiers bowing till the queen be gone.

She leaned upon the slab a little while,
  Then drew a jewelled pencil from her zone,
Scribbled a something with a frolic smile,
  Folded, inscribed, and niched it in the stone.

The shade slipped on, no swifter than the snail;
  There came a second lady to the place,
Dove-eyed, dove-robed, and something wan and pale,—­
  An inner beauty shining from her face.

She, as if listless with a lonely love,
  Straying among the alleys with a book,—­
Herrick or Herbert,—­watched the circling dove,
  And spied the tiny letter in the nook.

Then, like to one who confirmation found
  Of some dread secret half-accounted true,—­
Who knew what hearts and hands the letter bound,
  And argued loving commerce ’twixt the two,—­

She bent her fair young forehead on the stone;
  The dark shade gloomed an instant on her head;
And ’twixt her taper fingers pearled and shone
  The single tear that tear-worn eyes will shed.