Violets

     Violets, shy violets! 
     How many hearts with you compare! 
     Who hide themselves in thickest green,
     And thence, unseen,
     Ravish the enraptured air
     With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!

     Violets, shy violets! 
     Human hearts to me shall be
     Viewless violets in the grass,
     And as I pass,
     Odours and sweet imagery
     Will wait on mine and gladden me!

     Angelic love

     Angelic love that stoops with heavenly lips
     To meet its earthly mate;
     Heroic love that to its sphere’s eclipse
     Can dare to join its fate
     With one beloved devoted human heart,
     And share with it the passion and the smart,
     The undying bliss
     Of its most fleeting kiss;
     The fading grace
     Of its most sweet embrace:-
     Angelic love, heroic love! 
     Whose birth can only be above,
     Whose wandering must be on earth,
     Whose haven where it first had birth! 
     Love that can part with all but its own worth,
     And joy in every sacrifice
     That beautifies its Paradise! 
     And gently, like a golden-fruited vine,
     With earnest tenderness itself consign,
     And creeping up deliriously entwine
     Its dear delicious arms
     Round the beloved being! 
     With fair unfolded charms,
     All-trusting, and all-seeing, —
     Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine! 
     While to the panting heart’s dry yearning drouth
     Buds the rich dewy mouth —
     Tenderly uplifted,
     Like two rose-leaves drifted
     Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South! 
     Such love, such love is thine,
     Such heart is mine,
     O thou of mortal visions most divine!

     Twilight music

     Know you the low pervading breeze
     That softly sings
     In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,
     As if the wind were dreaming on its wings? 
     And have you marked their still degrees
     Of ebbing melody, like the strings
     Of a silver harp swept by a spirit’s hand
     In some strange glimmering land,
     ’Mid gushing springs,
     And glistenings
     Of waters and of planets, wild and grand! 
     And have you marked in that still time
     The chariots of those shining cars
     Brighten upon the hushing dark,
     And bent to hark
     That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,
     Pause in the dilating lustre
     Of the spheral cluster;
     Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep
     As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep! 
     And felt, despite earth’s jarring wars,
     When day is done
     And dead the sun,
     Still a voice divine can sing,
     Still is there sympathy can bring
     A whisper from the stars!