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TO A MOTHERLESS CHILD

Aн, child, thou art but half thy darling mother's; Hers couldst thou wholly be,

My light in thee would outglow all in others; She would relive to me.

But niggard Nature's trick of birth

Bars, lest she overjoy, Renewal of the loved on earth Save with alloy.

The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,
For love and loss like mine—

No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;
Only with fickle eyne.

To her mechanic artistry

My dreams are all unknown,

And why I wish that thou couldst be
But One's alone!

"I NEED NOT GO"

I NEED not go

Through sleet and snow To where I know

She waits for me;

She will tarry me there

Till I find it fair,

And have time to spare

From company.

When I've overgot
The world somewhat,
When things cost not
Such stress and strain,
Is soon enough
By cypress sough
To tell my Love
I am come again.

And if some day,

When none cries nay,
I still delay

To seek her side,

98

I NEED NOT GO"

(Though ample measure
Of fitting leisure
Await my pleasure)
She will not chide.

What—not upbraid me
That I delayed me,
Nor ask what stayed me
So long? Ah, no !—
New cares may claim me,
New loves inflame me,
She will not blame me,
But suffer it so.

SHELLEY'S SKYLARK

(The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March 1887)

SOMEWHERE afield here something lies
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust
That moved a poet to prophecies-
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust:

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,
And made immortal through times to be ;-
Though it only lived like another bird,
And knew not its immortality:

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell—
A little ball of feather and bone;
And how it perished, when piped farewell,
And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,
Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,
Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find

That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

ΙΟΟ

SHELLEY'S SKYLARK

And bring a casket silver-lined,

And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,

And consecrate it to endless time;
For it inspired a bard to win

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

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