Songs of Three Centuries

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

With music sweet as love, which overflows Or how could thy notes flow in such a

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

With some pain is fraught;

Among the flowers and grass, which screen Our sweetest songs are those that tell of

it from the view;

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

saddest thought.

Makes faint with too much sweet these I know not how thy joy we ever should

heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,

Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Joyous and clear and fresh thy music Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of

doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine!

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

the ground!

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow,

That panted forth a flood of rapture so The world should listen then, as I am

listening now!

ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN PROFANED.

ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,

One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.
One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee is more dear
Than that from another.

I can give not what men call love;
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above,
And the heavens reject not, -
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?