Thinking of nothing but following up thro' the clouds and

the sky,

Up and up,-alone, you and I!

'Twas night in heaven; and under a sycamine

Casting a broad black shade from the moon, your hands on mine,

You let my head to your feet, my beautiful friend incline;

And life had ceased its sorrows, my heart its sighs,

And I lay at rest, and look'd, and read in your earnest

eyes

Your perfect soul in your perfect face, and drank of your sympathies.

It seem'd I might love you—there, just as I would, and just as it ought to be,

At your feet, half worship, half fear,—yet for once my

soul

Was soothed as with balm, with a passionless strange

satiety

That gulf upon gulf seem'd to roll

Where empty the yearning had been too much for the

mortal in me

Yearning at your great greatness, the floods of your soul and your heart,

Your mind, that was made for mast'ring on mine, with a

hunger as if a part

Of myself had been taken to fill up your greatness; and I Strain'd to replenish the want till my head and my heart Rung and rung with their hunger, and now I was fill'd, and up high

The white moon went overhead thro' the clearness of heaven's great skies,

And your hand stroked mine-and I look'd, and was fill'd by your earnest eyes.

Crash and I ran to the earth-the playing had come to an end.

My dream is shatter'd; it seems as if nothing can mend.

In the world we work on and forget, but here in myself, as there,

Is the hunger that yearns of your greatness to have but a

share,

That can never be mine-but in heaven, perhaps, or as when I sat in the shade,

Too weary to think of thinking or doubting the world in a restful' disguise,

As if there was something existed somewhere that could sympathise.

Something somewhere to be found ere the soul quite dies.

And you, on the brink of whose fathomless being my own

stands ever afraid,

Sat at the spinet and play'd.

He play'd, my beautiful soul with the earnest eyes!

F

THE ELEMENT OF HER BEAUTY.

THE BIRD.

O SWEET Song-bird in the sunlight winging,
O'er crimson of poppy and yellow of wheat,
The sun springs out as your songs are springing,
And fain would be singing a song as sweet.
Sweet, sweet singing, and soft with clover

And thyme beyond number, and murmur of trees;
And pérfume and pollen a weft winds over,
Trodden by grasshoppers, over and over,
And crickets re-trilling the trills that are over,

In shimmer of beetles and booming of bees.
Slumbringly sweet, for the vineyards are nooning,
My sweet one and I are a-weary with pruning,
Of sunlight and sunning, and now for the nooning,-
Low in the vine-props, lull'd by the tuning

Of vine-leaf and tendril,-my head to her knees.

O curling and creeping leaf-rustles that cover,

The cooler, the closer, from noon that runs over,
My love in her love in the kiss of a lover,
With soft leaf-light and sun-harmonies.

O sweet song-bird, in our dreams a-winging,
And drifting the sun and the summer along,
Till slumber is full of the sun, as thy singing
Is full of the sun, or the sun of thy song;
Till dream'd in our love is the husbandman, Summer,
Love-sick and sighing, and thou the reed-flute;
He pipes of his loving, as living gets dumber,
And dumber to death, as the sunning and summer,
And day-light, and music of dancing is dumber,

And all but the frogs in the marshes are mute.
O bird! the sun is the soul of your singing,
That sings of a love you would fain be a-flinging,
And seeking a solace, the blighting but bringing,—
For singing and soul are as knit,-as the clinging

Of lizard to lizard, where gnarls the vine-root.
But vineyards are chill, where they shook in the summer,
And summer has sunk as your singing grew dumber,
And weary we wander from night the new-comer,
Our souls love-o'erladen, our shoulders with fruit.
Heavy with honey drones home the rose-hummer—
Sun thou art darkened-bird thou art mute.