The rains are as dews for the christening
  Of dawns that the nights benumb: 
The spring’s voice answers me listening
  For speech of a child to come,
While promise of music is glistening
  On lips that delight keeps dumb.

The mists and the storms receding
  At sight of you smile and die: 
Your eyes held wide on me reading
  Shed summer across the sky: 
Your heart shines clear for me, heeding
  No more of the world than I.

The world, what is it to you, dear,
  And me, if its face be grey,
And the new-born year be a shrewd year
  For flowers that the fierce winds fray? 
You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear;
  You laugh, and the month turns May.

Love cares not for care, he has daffed her
  Aside as a mate for guile: 
The sight that my soul yearns after
  Feeds full my sense for awhile;
Your sweet little sun-faced laughter,
  Your good little glad grave smile.

Your hands through the bookshelves flutter;
  Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught;
Blake’s visions, that lighten and mutter;
  Moliere—­and his smile has nought
Left on it of sorrow, to utter
  The secret things of his thought.

No grim thing written or graven
  But grows, if you gaze on it, bright;
A lark’s note rings from the raven,
  And tragedy’s robe turns white;
And shipwrecks drift into haven;
  And darkness laughs, and is light.

Grief seems but a vision of madness;
  Life’s key-note peals from above
With nought in it more of sadness
  Than broods on the heart of a dove: 
At sight of you, thought grows gladness,
  And life, through love of you, love.

A DOUBLE BALLAD OF AUGUST.

(1884.)

All Afric, winged with death and fire,
Pants in our pleasant English air. 
Each blade of grass is tense as wire,
And all the wood’s loose trembling hair
Stark in the broad and breathless glare
Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree. 
This bright sharp death shines everywhere;
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre;
The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear. 
All power to fear, all keen desire,
Lies dead as dreams of days that were
Before the new-born world lay bare
In heaven’s wide eye, whereunder we
Lie breathless till the season spare: 
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire
On spirit and sense, divide and share
The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire,
The throes of dreams that scarce forbear
One mute immitigable prayer
For cold perpetual sleep to be
Shed snowlike on the sense of care. 
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.

The dust of ways where men suspire
Seems even the dust of death’s dim lair. 
But though the feverish days be dire
The sea-wind rears and cheers its fair
Blithe broods of babes that here and there
Make the sands laugh and glow for glee
With gladder flowers than gardens wear. 
Life yearns for solace toward the sea.