Hawthorn and Lavender

After the grim daylight,
Night --
Night and the stars and the sea!
Only the sea, and the stars
And the star-shown sails and spars --
Naught else in the night for me!

Over the northern height,
Light --
Light and the dawn of a day
With nothing for me but a breast
Laboured with love's unrest,
And the irk of an idle May!

A world of leafage murmurous and a-twinkle;
The green, delicious plenitude of June;
Love and laughter and song
The blue day long
Going to the same glad, golden tune --
The same glad tune!

Clouds on the dim, delighting skies a-sprinkle;
Poplars black in the wake of a setting moon;
Love and languor and sleep
And the star-sown deep
Going to the same good, golden tune --
The same good tune!

In the red April dawn,
   In the wild April weather,
From brake and thicket and lawn
   The birds sing all together.

The look of the hoyden Spring
   Is pinched and shrewish and cold;
But all together they sing
   Of a world that can never be old:

Of a world still young -- still young! --
   Whose last word won't be said,
Nor her last song dreamed and sung,
   Till her last true lover's dead!

Your feet as glad
And light as a dove's homing wings, you came -- 
Came with your sweets to fill my hands,
My sense with your perfume.

We closed with lips
Grown weary and fain with longing from afar,
The while your grave, enamoured eyes
Drank down the dream in mine.

Till the great need
So lovely and so instant grew, it seemed
The embodied Spirit of the Spring
Hung at me, heart on heart.

I talked one midnight with the jolly ghost
Of a gray ancestor, Tom Heywood hight;
And, "Here's," says he, his old heart liquor-lifted --
"Here's how we did when Gloriana shone:"

All in a garden green
   Thrushes were singing;
Red rose and white between,
   Lilies were springing;
It was the merry May;
   Yet sang my Lady: --
"Nay, Sweet, now nay, now nay!
   I am not ready."

Then to a pleasant shade
   I did invite her:
All things a concert made,
   For to delight her;
Under, the grass was gay;
   Yet sang my Lady: --
"Nay, Sweet, now nay, now nay!
   I am not ready."

Look down, dear eyes, look down,
   Lest you betray her gladness.
Dear brows, do naught but frown,
   Lest men miscall my madness.

Come not, dear hands, so near,
   Lest all besides come nearer.
Dear heart, hold me less dear,
   Lest time hold nothing dearer.

Keep me, dear lips, O, keep
   The great last word unspoken,
Lest other eyes go weep,
   And other lives lie broken!