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A LOVERS` QUARREL
Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night`s rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love`s away!
I`d as lief that the blue were grey,
Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit`s cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.
Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,---
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go---
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!
Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We would try and trace
One another`s face
In the ash, as an artist draws;
Free on each other`s flaws,
How we chattered like two church daws!
What`s in the `Times``?---a scold
At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride
To his gruesome side,
That`s as fair as himself is bold:
There they sit ermine-stoled,
And she powders her hair with gold.
Fancy the Pampas` sheen!
Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow
In a solid glow,
And---to break now and then the screen---
Black neck and eyeballs keen,
Up a wild horse leaps between!
Try, will our table turn?
Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips
Thro` the finger-tips
In a fire which a few discern,
And a very few feel burn,
And the rest, they may live and learn!
Then we would up and pace,
For a change, about the place,
Each with arm o`er neck:
`Tis our quarter-deck,
We are seamen in woeful case.
Help in the ocean-space!
Or, if no help, we`ll embrace.
See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest!
`Tis a huge fur cloak---
Like a reindeer`s yoke
Falls the lappet along the breast:
Sleeves for her arms to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.
Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,
Or I tint your lip
With a burnt stick`s tip
And you turn into such a man!
Just the two spots that span
Half the bill of the young male swan.
Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow
With his hand`s first sweep
Put the earth to sleep:
`Twas a time when the heart could show
All---how was earth to know,
`Neath the mute hand`s to-and-fro?
Dearest, three months ago
When we loved each other so,
Lived and loved the same
Till an evening came
When a shaft from the devil`s bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and foe!
Not from the heart beneath---
`Twas a bubble born of breath,
Neither sneer nor vaunt,
Nor reproach nor taunt.
See a word, how it severeth!
Oh, power of life and death
In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!
Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You,---
Since, as truth is true,
I was You all the happy past---
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?
Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the pure and true
And the beauteous and the right,---
Bear with a moment`s spite
When a mere mote threats the white!
What of a hasty word?
Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm`s pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?
See the eye, by a fly`s foot blurred---
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain`s coat of curd!
Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care?
`Tis the world the same
For my praise or blame,
And endurance is easy there.
Wrong in the one thing rare---
Oh, it is hard to bear!
Here`s the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows:
We shall have the word
In a minor third
There is none but the cuckoo knows:
Heaps of the guelder-rose!
I must bear with it, I suppose.
Could but November come,
Were the noisy birds struck dumb
At the warning slash
Of his driver`s-lash---
I would laugh like the valiant Thumb
Facing the castle glum
And the giant`s fee-faw-fum!
Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped
We can stand apart,
Heart dispense with heart
In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,---
Oh, the world`s hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!
Each in the crypt would cry
``But one freezes here! and why?
``When a heart, as chill,
``At my own would thrill
``Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
``Heart, shall we live or die?
``The rest. . . . settle by-and-by!``
So, she`d efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
It is twelve o`clock:
I shall hear her knock
In the worst of a storm`s uproar,
I shall pull her through the door,
I shall have her for evermore!
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