Daisies
Fair and peaceful daisies,
Smiling in the grass,
Who hath sung your praises?
Poets by you pass,
And I alone am left to celebrate your mass.
In the summer morning,
Through the fields ye shine,
Joyfully adorning
Earth with grace divine,
And pour, from sunny hearts, fresh gladness into mine.
Lying in the meadows,
Like the milky way,
From nocturnal shadows
Glad to fall away,
And live a happy life in the wide light of day.
Bees about you humming
Pile their yellow store,
Winds in whispers coming
Teach you love's sweet lore,
For your reluctant lips still worshipping the more.
Birds with music laden
Shower their songs on you;
And the rustic maiden,
Standing in the dew,
By your alternate leaves tells if her love be true.
Little stars of glory!
From your amber eyes
No inconstant story
Of her love should rise!
And yet 'He loves me not!' is oft the sad surprise.
Crowds of milk-white blossoms!
Noon's concentred beams
Glowing in your bosoms;
So, by living streams
In heaven, I think the light of flowers immortal gleams.
When your date is over,
Peacefully ye fade,
With the fragrant clover
And sweet grasses laid,
In odors for a pall beneath the orchard shade.
Happy, happy daisies!
Would I were like you,
Pure from human praises,
Fresh with morning dew,
And ever in my heart to heaven's clear sunshine true!
Fastrada's Ring
'Stretch out thy hand, insatiate Time!
Keeper of keys, restore to me
Some gift that in the gray Earth's prime
Her happy children held of thee;
Some signet of that mystery
Thy footsteps trample into death,
Some score of that strange harmony
That sings in every breath.'
So sung I on an autumn-day,
Sitting in silence, golden, clear,
When even the mild winds seemed to pray
Beside the slowly dying year,
And the old conqueror stopped to hear;
For, like the echo of a bell,
I heard him speak, in accents clear:
'Choose! and thy wise choice tell!'
Then all my vanishing desires,
The threads of hope and joy and pain,
Long burned in life's consuming fires,
Came glittering into life again,
And, gathered as a summer rain
Into the rainbow's bended wing,
Cried, with one voice of longing vain:
'Give me Fastrada's ring!
'Give me that talisman of peace
She wore upon her finger white,
Then shall the weary visions cease,
That haunt me all the lingering night;
The world shall blossom with delight,
And birds of heaven about me sing;
Ah! fill these darkened eyes with light!
Give me Fastrada's ring!
'Give me no jewels from thy store,
No learned scrolls, no gems of art;
My eager wishes grasp at more:
Sleep for a worn and wretched heart;
A draught to melt these lips apart,
Sealed with such thirst as death-pains bring;
Love,-life's sole rest and better part,
Give me Fastrada's ring!'
