O, tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and tender is the North.

O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,

And cheep and twitter twenty million loves.

O, were I thou that she might take me in, And lay me on her bosom, and her heart Would rock the snowy cradle till I died!

Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, Delaying as the tender ash delays

To clothe herself, when all the woods are green?

O, tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown;
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South,
But in the North long since my nest is made.

O, tell her, brief is life but love is long, And brief the sun of summer in the North, And brief the moon of beauty in the South.

O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine, And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

THE FLOWER'S NAME

HERE'S the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:

Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss

Hinders the hinges and makes them wince! She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned, To feed and forget it the leaves among.

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The Flower's Name

Down this side of the gravel-walk

She went while her robe's edge brushed the box:

And here she paused in her gracious talk

To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox. Roses, ranged in valiant row,

I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know;

But yonder see where the rock-plants lie!

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,

Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love or praise?

Speech half-asleep, or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

Roses, if I live and do well,

I may bring her, one of these days, To fix you fast with as fine a spell,

Fit you each with his Spanish phrase: But do not detain me now; for she lingers There, like sunshine over the ground, And ever I see her soft white fingers Searching after the bud she found.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
Stay as you are and be loved forever!
Bud, if I kiss you, 'tis that you blow not,
Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn, and down they nestle-
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

June's twice June since she breathed it with me?

Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!

-Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces,-
Roses, you are not so fair after all!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

TO MARGUERITE

YES: in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,

We mortal millions live alone.

The islands feel the enclasping flow,

And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour;

O then a longing like despair

Is to their farthest caverns sent!
For surely once, they feel, we were

Parts of a single continent.

Now round us spreads the watery plain-
O might our marges meet again!

Who ordered that their longing's fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance ruled;
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

SEPARATION

STOP!-not to me, at this bitter departing,

Speak of the sure consolations of time!

Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting,
So but thy image endure in its prime.

Longing

But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature

Wills that remembrance should always decayIf the loved form and the deep-cherished feature Must, when unseen, from the soul fade away

Me let no half-effaced memories cumber!
Fled, fled at once, be all vestige of thee!
Deep be the darkness and still be the slumber—
Dead be the past and its phantoms to me!

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Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there: Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me,

With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair?

Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]

LONGING

COME to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou nevér cam'st ih sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love I why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888]

DIVIDED

I

An empty sky, a world of heather,
Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom;
We two among them wading together,
Shaking out honey, treading perfume.

Crowds of bees are giddy with clover,

Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet, Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet.

Flusheth the rise with her purple favor,
Gloweth the cleft with her golden ring,
"Twixt the two brown butterflies waver,
Lightly settle, and sleepily swing.

We two walk till the purple dieth,

And short dry grass under foot is brown,

But one little streak at a distance lieth

Green like a ribbon to prank the down.

II

Over the grass we stepped unto it,

And God He knoweth how blithe we were!

Never a voice to bid us eschew it:

Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair!

Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it,
We parted the grasses dewy and sheen:
Drop over drop there filtered and slided
A tiny bright beck that trickled between.

Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us,
Light was our talk as of fairy bells;-
Fairy wedding-bells faintly rung to us
Down in their fortunate parallels.