Could love make worthy things of worthless,
  My song were worth an ear: 
Its note should make the days most mirthless
  The merriest of the year,
And wake to birth all buds yet birthless
  To keep your birthday, dear.

But where your birthday brightens heaven
  No need has earth, God knows,
Of light or warmth to melt or leaven
  The frost or fog that glows
With sevenfold heavenly lights of seven
  Sweet springs that cleave the snows.

Could love make worthy music of you,
  And match my Master’s powers,
Had even my love less heart to love you,
  A better song were ours;
With all the rhymes like stars above you,
  And all the words like flowers.

September 30, 1880.

A PARTING SONG.

(To a friend leaving England for a year’s residence in
Australia.)

        These winds and suns of spring
        That warm with breath and wing
The trembling sleep of earth, till half awake
She laughs and blushes ere her slumber break,
        For all good gifts they bring
        Require one better thing,
For all the loans of joy they lend us, borrow
One sharper dole of sorrow,
To sunder soon by half a world of sea
Her son from England and my friend from me.

        Nor hope nor love nor fear
        May speed or stay one year,
Nor song nor prayer may bid, as mine would fain,
The seasons perish and be born again,
        Restoring all we lend,
        Reluctant, of a friend,
The voice, the hand, the presence and the sight
That lend their life and light
To present gladness and heart-strengthening cheer,
Now lent again for one reluctant year.

        So much we lend indeed,
        Perforce, by force of need,
So much we must; even these things and no more
The far sea sundering and the sundered shore
        A world apart from ours,
        So much the imperious hours,
Exact, and spare not; but no more than these
All earth and all her seas
From thought and faith of trust and truth can borrow,
Not memory from desire, nor hope from sorrow.

        Through bright and dark and bright
        Returns of day and night
I bid the swift year speed and change and give
His breath of life to make the next year live
        With sunnier suns for us
        A life more prosperous,
And laugh with flowers more fragrant, that shall see
A merrier March for me,
A rosier-girdled race of night with day,
A goodlier April and a tenderer May.

        For him the inverted year
        Shall mark our seasons here
With alien alternation, and revive
This withered winter, slaying the spring alive
        With darts more sharply drawn
        As nearer draws the dawn
In heaven transfigured over earth transformed
And with our winters warmed
And wasted with our summers, till the beams
Rise on his face that rose on Dante’s dreams.