The Rainbow and the Rose. Эдит Несбит

to my heart's hid core:

        Those other loves? how should one learn

        From marshlights how the great fires burn?

        Ah, no! I never loved before!

SONG

        THE sunshine of your presence lies

        On the glad garden of my heart

        And bids the leaves of silence part

        To show the flowers to your dear eyes,

        And flower on flower blooms there and dies

        And still new buds awakened spring,

        For sunshine makes the garden wise,

        To know the time for blossoming.

        Night is no time for blossoming,

        Your garden then dreams otherwise,

        Of vanished Summer, vanished Spring,

        And how the dearest flower first dies.

        Yet from your ministering eyes

        Though night hath drawn me far apart

        On the still garden of my heart

        The moonlight of your memory lies.

TO VERA, WHO ASKED A SONG

        IF I only had time!

        I could make you a rhyme.

        But my time is kept flying

        By smiling and sighing

        And living and dying for you.

        The song-seed, I sow it,

        I water and hoe it,

        But never can grow it.

        Ah, traitress, you know it!

        What is a poor poet to do?

        Ah, let me take breath!

        I am harried to death

        By the loves and the graces

        That crowd where your face is

        That lurk in your laces and throng.

        Call them off for a minute,

        Once let me begin it

        The devil is in it

        If I can not spin it

        As sweet as a linnet, your song!

THE POET TO HIS LOVE

        ALL the flight of thoughts here, shy, bold, scared, intrusive,

        Fluttering in the sun, between the green and blue,

        Wheeling, whirling, poising, lovely and elusive,

        How to cage the flying thoughts, my winged delight, for you?

        Set a springe of rhyme, and hope to catch them in it?

        Strew my love as grain to lure them to the snare?

        Watch the hours built up, slow minute piled on minute?

        Still the wide sky guards their flight, and still the cage is bare.

        Gleam of hovering feathers, brushing me to flout me!

        Wings, be weary! Rest! Who loves you more than I?

        Caught? Oh fluttering pinions whitening air about me!

        Rustling wings, and distant flight, and empty cage and sky!

THE MAIDEN'S PRAYER

        SPRING, pretty Spring, what treasure do you bring to me?

        Green grass and buttercups, cherry-bloom and may?

        Sunshine to be glad with me, and little birds to sing to me?

        Warm nests to call me along the woodland way?

        Spring, happy Spring, what wonder will you do for me?

        Light the tulip lanterns, and set the furze a-fire?

        Fill your sky with sails of cloud on waves of living blue for me?

        Show me green cornfields and budding of the briar?

        Spring, darling Spring, my days will not return to me,

        You who see them fleeting, you, all time above,

        You who move the whole world's heart, ah move one heart to turn to me,

        —Bring me a lover, and teach me how to love!

SONG

        "LOVE me little, love me long,"

        Is the burden of my song,

        And if nothing more may be

        Little shall suffice for me.

        But if you could crown with flowers

        All my radiant, festal hours,

        And console for hours of sorrow

        Love me more with each to-morrow.

        And if you would turn my days

        To one splendid hymn of praise,

        And set hopes like stars above me

        Love me much, and always love me!

THE MAGIC FLOWER

        THROUGH many days and many days

        The seed of love lay hidden close;

        We walked the dusty tiresome ways

        Where never a leaf or blossom grows.

        And in the darkness, all the while,