Chapter I: DREAM of her the whole night long,

The pillows with my tears are wet. I wake, I seek amid the throng The courage to forget.

Yet still, as night comes round, I dread,
With unavailing fears,
The dawn that finds, beneath my head,
The pillows wet with tears.

TEARS.

O HANDS that I have held in mine,
That knew my kisses and my tears,
Hands that in other years
Have poured my balm, have poured my wine;

Women, once loved, and always mine,
I call to you across the years,
I bring a gift of tears,
I bring my tears to you as wine.

THE LAST EXIT.

OUR love was all arrayed in pleasantness,
A tender little love that sighed and smiled
At little happy nothings, like a child,
A dainty little love in fancy dress.

But now the love that once was half in play
Has come to be this grave and piteous thing.
Why did you leave me all this suffering
For all your memory when you went away?

You might have played the play out, O my friend,
Closing upon a kiss our comedy.
Or is it, then, a fault of taste in me,
Who like no tragic exit at the end?

AFTER LOVE.

O TO part now, and, parting now,
Never to meet again;
To have done for ever, I and thou,
With joy, and so with pain.

It is too hard, too hard to meet
As friends, and love no more;
Those other meetings were too sweet
That went before.

And I would have, now love is over,
An end to all, an end:
I cannot, having been your lover,
Stoop to become your friend!

ALLA PASSERETTA BRUNA.

IF I bid you, you will come,
If I bid you, you will go,
You are mine, and so I take you
To my heart, your home;
Well, ah, well I know
I shall not forsake you.

I shall always hold you fast,
I shall never set you free,
You are mine, and I possess you
Long as life shall last;
You will comfort me,
I shall bless you.

I shall keep you as we keep
Flowers for memory, hid away,
Under many a newer token
Buried deep,
Roses of a gaudier day,
Rings and trinkets, bright and broken.

Other women I shall love,
Fame and fortune I may win,
But when fame and love forsake me
And the light is night above,
You will let me in,
You will take me.

NOCTURNES.

NOCTURNE.

ONE little cab to hold us two, Night, an invisible dome of cloud, The rattling wheels that made our whispers loud, As heart-beats into whispers grew; And, long, the Embankment with its lights, The pavement glittering with fallen rain, The magic and the mystery that are night’s, And human love without the pain.

The river shook with wavering gleams, Deep buried as the glooms that lay Impenetrable as the grave of day, Near and as distant as our dreams. A bright train flashed with all its squares Of warm light where the bridge lay mistily. The night was all about us: we were free, Free of the day and all its cares!

That was an hour of bliss too long, Too long to last where joy is brief. Yet one escape of souls may yield relief To many weary seasons’ wrong. “O last for ever!” my heart cried; It ended: heaven was done. I had been dreaming by her side That heaven was but begun.

HER STREET.

(IN ABSENCE.)