Flower of my heart, my darling, why so slowly Lift’st thou thine eyes to mine, sweet wells of gladness? Too deep this new-found joy, and this new pain too holy; Or is there dread in thine heart of this divinest madness?
Who sighs with longing there? who laughs alow--and passes? Whose following feet are these that bend the tall marsh-mallows? Who comes upon the wind that stirs the heavy seeding grasses In and out the osier beds, and hither through the shallows?
Flower of my heart, my Dream, who whispers near so gladly? Whose is the golden sunshine-net o’erspread for capture? Lift, lift thine eyes to mine, who love so wildly, madly-- Those eyes of brave desire, deep wells o’er-brimmed with rapture.
“Love me, or I am slain!” I cried, and meant Bitterly true each word. Nights, morns, slipped by, Moons, circling suns, yet still alive am I; But shame to me, if my best time be spent.
On this perverse, blind passion! Are we sent Upon a planet just to mate and die, A man no more than some pale butterfly That yields his day to nature’s sole intent?
Or is my life but Marguerite’s ox-eyed flower, That I should stand and pluck and fling away, One after one, the petal of each hour, Like a love-dreamy girl, and only say, “Loves me,” and “loves me not,” and “loves me”? Nay! Let the man’s mind awake to manhood’s power.
We’re all alone, we’re all alone! The moon and stars are dead and gone; The night’s at deep, the wind asleep, And thou and I are all alone!
What care have we though life there be? Tumult and life are not for me! Silence and sleep about us creep; Tumult and life are not for thee!
How late it is since such as this Had topped the height of breathing bliss! And now we keep an iron sleep,-- In that grave thou, and I in this!
When the late leaves lit all the place, He left her with her ashen face; “We shall not meet!” he lightly cried; “Good-bye, sweetheart, the world is wide.”
Though bright the sunshine on that day, Though the bare boughs around her lay, She thought in blackened shadow stood The melancholy autumn wood.
She bent, and lifted from the sod A leaf whereon his foot had trod,-- An idle leaf, but dead and sere, It held the heart’s blood of a year!
I know not if moonlight or starlight Be soft on the land or the sea,-- I catch but the near light, the far light, Of eyes that are burning for me; The scent of the night, of the roses, May burden the air for thee, sweet,-- ’Tis only the breath of thy sighing I know, as I lie at thy feet.