The Household Book of Poetry

UNDER yonder beech-tree standing on the When her mother tends her before the bash

green sward,

Couched with her arms behind her little head,
Her knees folded up, and her tresses on her
bosom,

Lies my young love sleeping in the shade.
Had I the heart to slide one arm beneath her!
Press her dreaming lips as her waist I folded
slow,

ful mirror,

Loosening her laces, combing down her curls, Often she thinks-were this wild thing wedded,

I should lose but one for so many boys and girls.

Clambering roses peep into her chamber;

Waking on the instant she could not but em- Jasmine and woodbine breathe sweet, sweet

brace me-

Ah! would she hold me, and never let me go?

Shy as the squirrel, and wayward as the swallow;

White-necked swallows, twittering of sum

mer,

Fill her with balm and nested peace from head to feet.

Ah! will the rose-bough see her lying lonely, Swift as the swallow when, athwart the west- When the petals fall and fierce bloom is on ern flood,

the leaves?

Circleting the surface, he meets his mirrored Will the autumn garners see her still un

winglets

Is that dear one in her maiden bud.

Shy as the squirrel whose nest is in the pine

tops;

gathered,

When the fickle swallows forsake the weeping eaves?

Gentle-ah that she were jealous-as the Comes a sudden question-should a strange dove!

hand pluck her!

Full of all the wildness of the woodland crea-Oh! what an anguish smites me at the thought! Should some idle lordling bribe her mind with jewels!

tures,

Happy in herself is the maiden that I love!

Can such beauty ever thus be bought? What can have taught her distrust of all I tell Sometimes the huntsmen, prancing down the her?

valley,

Can she truly doubt me when looking on my Eye the village lasses, full of sprightly mirth; brows? They see, as I see, mine is the fairest!

Nature never teaches distrust of tender love- Would she were older and could read my

Show the bridal heavens but one bright star? Whispering together beneath the listening Wherefore thus then do I chase a shadow, Clattering one note like a brown eve-jar?

moon,

I prayed till her cheek flushed, implored till So I rhyme and reason till she darts before she faltered

Fluttered to my bosom-ah! to fly away so Through the milky meadows from flower to soon!

When her mother tends her before the laughing mirror,

Tying up her laces, looping up her hair,

flower she flies,

Sunning her sweet palms to shade her dazzled

eyelids

From the golden love that looks too eager in her eyes.

When at dawn she wakens, and her fair face | Come, merry mcrth of the cuckoo and the gazes violet! Out on the weather through the window Come, weeping loveliness in all thy blue panes, delight! Beauteous she looks! like a white water-lily Lo! the nest is ready, let me not languish Bursting out of bud on the rippled river

plains.

When from bed she rises, clothed from neck
to ankle

In her long night gown, sweet as boughs of
May,

Beauteous she looks! like a tall garden lily,
Pure from the night and perfect for the day!

Happy, happy time, when the gray star twinkles

Over the fields all fresh with bloomy dew; When the cold-cheeked dawn grows ruddy up the twilight,

longer!

Bring her to my arms on the first May night

GEORGE MEREDITH,

LADY CLARE.

LORD RONALD courted Lady Clare,
I trow they did not part in scorn;
Lord Ronald, her cousin, courted her,
And they will wed the morrow morn.

"He does not love me for my birth,
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;

And the gold sun wakes and weds her in the He loves me for my own true worth,

blue.

Then when my darling tempts the early

breezes,

She the only star that dies not with the dark!
Powerless to speak all the ardor of my pas-

sion,

I catch her little hand as we listen to the lark.

And that is well." said Lady Clare.

In there came old Alice the nurse,

Said, "Who was this that went from thee?" "It was my cousin," said Lady Clare, "To-morrow he weds with me."

"Oh God be thanked!" said Alice the nurse, "That all comes round so just and fair:

Shall the birds in vain then valentine their Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,

sweethearts?

Season after season tell a fruitless tale?

Will not the virgin listen to their voices? Take the honeyed meaning, wear the bridal veil?

Fears she frosts of winter, fears she the bare branches?

Waits she the garlands of spring for her dower?

Is she a nightingale that will not be nested Till the April woodland has built her bridal bower?

Then come, merry April, with all thy birds and beauties!

With thy crescent brows and thy ficwery,

showery glee;

Said Lady Clare, "that ye speak so wildi'

As God's above," said Alice the nurse,
"I speak the truth: you are my child.

"The old earl's daughter died at my breast
I speak the truth as I live by bread!
I buried her like my own sweet child,
And put my child in her stead.”
"Falsely, falsely have ye done,

O mother," she said, "if this be true,
To keep the best man under the sun
So many years from his due."

With thy budding leafage and fresh green "Nay now, my child," said Alice the nurse "But keep the secret for your life, And may thy lustrous crescent grow a hon- And all you have will be Lord Ronald's,

pastures;

eyinoon for me!

When you are man and wife."

THAT thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young
days,

Either not assailed, or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged.

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show, Then, thou alone kingdoms of hearts ehouldst owe.

So are you to my thoughts, as food to life,
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the
ground;

And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treas-
ure;

Now counting best to be with you alone, Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight,

Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and suffer day by day:
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

FAREWELL! thou art too dear for my possess

ing,

And like enough thou know'st thy estimate;
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not
knowing,

Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment mak-
ing.

Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter

In sleep a king; but waking no such matter.

SOME say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
Some say thy grace is youth, and gentle sport:
Both grace and faults are loved of more and
less;

Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a throned queen
The basest jewel will be well esteemed,
So are those errors that in thee are seen,
To truths translated, and for true things

deemed.

SONNETS.

How many lambs might the stern wolf betray, If like a lamb he could his looks translate! How many gazers might'st thou lead away,

239

THE forward violet thus did I chide:Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,

If thou wouldst use the strength of all thy If not from my love's breath? the purple

state !⚫

But do not so; I love thee in such sort

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days

seen,

What old December's bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer's

time;

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widowed wombs after their lords' de-
cease;

Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or, if they sing, 't is with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the win-

ter 's near.

FROM you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where
they grew;

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They are but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you-you pattern of all those.

Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

pride

Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells,

In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.
The lily I condemned for thy hand,
And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair;
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
One blushing shame, another white despair;
A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both,
And to this robbery had annexed thy breath;
But for his theft, in pride of all his growth
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,
But sweet in color it had stolen from thee.

WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty's best,
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique pen would have expressed
Even such a beauty as you master now.
So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And for they looked but with divining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing;
For we, which now behold these present
days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Nor mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,

Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage:
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now, with the drops of this most balmy time

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