I do not now begin,—I still adore
Her whom I early cherished in my breast,
Then once again with prudence dispossessed,
And to whose heart I'm driven back once more.
The love of Petrarch, that all-glorious love,
Was unrequited, and, alas, full sad;
One long Good Friday 'twas, one heartache drear;
But may my mistress' Advent ever prove,
With its palm-jubilee, so sweet and glad,
One endless May-day, through the livelong year!
CHARADE.
Two words there are, both short, of beauty rare,
Whose sounds our lips so often love to frame,
But which with clearness never can proclaim
The things whose own peculiar stamp they bear.
'Tis well in days of age and youth so fair,
One on the other boldly to inflame;
And if those words together linked we name,
A blissful rapture we discover there.
But now to give them pleasure do I seek,
And in myself my happiness would find;
I hope in silence, but I hope for this:
Gently, as loved ones' names, those words to speak,
To see them both within one image shrined,
Both in one being to embrace with bliss.
THE SOLDIER'S CONSOLATION.
No! in truth there's here no lack:
White the bread, the maidens black!
To another town, next night,
Black the bread, the maidens white!
