LUELLA CLARK. IF YOU LOVE ME. IF you love me, tell me not; Let me see it in your eye If you love me, there will be Something in your eyes will shine Fairer that they look in mine. In your mien some touch of grace, Some swift smile upon your face While you speak not, will betray What your lips could scarcely say. In your speech some silver word, If you love me, then, I pray, Tell me not, but, day by day, Let love silent on me rise, Like the sun in summer skies. NANTASKET. FAIR is thy face, Nantasket, And fair thy curving shores,― The peering spires of villages, The boatman's dipping oars, The lonely ledge of Minot, Beside the brook the gentian Closes its fringèd eyes, And waits the later glory Of October's yellow skies. Within the sea-washed meadow The wild grape climbs the wall, Where the watchman tends his And from the o'er-ripe chestnuts light, And sets his perilous beacon, Over thy vast sea highway, The great ships slide from sight, And flocks of wingèd phantoms Flit by, like birds in flight. Over the toppling sea-wall The home-bound dories float, And I watch the patient fisherman Bend in his anchored boat. I am alone with Nature; The autumn dandelion Along the roadside burns; Down from the lichened boulders Quiver the plumèd ferns; The cream-white silk of the milkweed Floats from its sea-green pod; Out from the mossy rock-seams Flashes the golden-rod. The woodbine's scarlet banners Flaunt from their towers of stone; By the hill-path to the seaside And over the grassy ramparts lean Hosts of gold-hearted daisies Nod by the wayside bars; The tangled thicket of green is set With the aster's purple stars; The brown burs softly fall. I see the tall reeds shiver Beside the salt sea marge; I see the sea-bird glimmer, I hear in the groves of Hingham Strikes the shining rocks below; As the lovely ghost of the thistle In from the vast sea-spaces comes | Against the warm sea-beaches As if never human pain, Sought the healing draught of Lethe, Beyond the gleaming plain. Fair is the earth behind me, It is no realm enchanted, It cannot be more fair Than this nook of Nature's Kingdom, With its spell of space and air. Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay, Unowning then, confusing soon With dreamier dreams that o'er the glass Of shyly ripening woman-sense In Hymen's shrine recalls not now She first-in hour, ah, not profane! With me to Hymen learnt to bow. Ah no!-yet owned we, fused in one, The power which, e'en in stones and earths By blind elections felt, in forms Organic breeds to myriad births; By lichen small on granite wall Approved, its faintest, feeblest stir Slow-spreading, strengthening long, at last Vibrated full in me and her. In me and her sensation strange! The lily grew to pendent head; To vernal airs the mossy bank Its sheeny primrose spangles spread; In roof o'er roof of shade sun-proof Did cedar strong itself outclimb; And altitude of aloe proud Aspire in floral crown sublime; Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies; Big bees their burly bodies swung; Rooks roused with civic din the elms; And lark its wild reveillé rung; In Libyan dell the light gazelle, The leopard lithe in Indian glade, And dolphin, brightening tropic seas, In us were living, leapt and played. Their shells did slow crustacea build; Their gilded skins did snakes re new; While mightier spines for loftier kind Their types in amplest limbs out grew; Yea, close comprest in human breast, What moss, and tree, and livelier thing |