A VALENTINE, ’98 121
Silent and slim and delicate
The flower shall spring,
Till there be born immaculate
A fair new thing.
Tall as the mother-lily, still
By faint winds swayed ;
Tender and pure, without a will—
An English maid.
No tree of poison, at whose feet
All men lie dead ;
No well of death, whose waters sweet
Are tinged with red.
No hideous impassioned queen
For whom love dies;
No warm imperious Messaline
That slew with sighs.
Fiercer desires may cast away
All things most good ;
A people may forget to-day
Their motherhood.
She will remain, unshaken yet
By storm and sun ;
She will remain, when years forget
That fierier one.
A race of clean strong men shall spring
From her pure life.
Men shall be happy ; bards shall sing
The English wife.
And thou, forget thou that my mouth
EIas ever clung
To flame of hell; that of the south
The songs I sung.
Forget that I have trampled flowers,
And worn the crown
Of thorns of roses in the hours
So long dropped drown.
Forget, O white-faced maid, that I
Have dallied long
In classic bowers and mystery
Of classic song.
Eros and Aphrodite now
I can forget,
Placing upon thy maiden brow
Love’s coronet,
Wake from the innocent dear sleep
Of childhood’s life :
An English maiden must not weep
To be a wife.
So shall our love bridge space, and bring
The tender breath
Of sun and moon and stars that sing
To gladden Death.
I see your cheek grow pale and cold,
Then flush above. )
Kiss me; I know that I behold
The birth of Love.
PENELOPE.
ULYssES ’scaped the sorceries of that queen
That turned to swine his goodly com-
pany,
And came with sails broad-burgeoning and
clean
Over the ripples of his native sea.
Yet for the shores his eyes had lately seen,
He kept a half-regretful memory ;
And thought, when all the flower-strewn ways
were green,
‘* Better love Circe than Penelope !”
Yes. A govod woman’s love will forge a
chain
To break the spirit of the bravest Greek ;
While with an harlot one may leap again
Free as the waters of the western main,
And turn with no heart-pang the vessel’s
beak
Out to the oceans that all seamen seek.