Estate, good-fame, Plans, credit and the Muse,- 'T is a brave master; Let it have scope: Follow it utterly, And the outlets of the sky. It was never for the mean; Leave all for love; Yet, hear me, yet, One word more thy heart behoved, One pulse more of firm endeavor, Keep thee to-day, Free as an Arab Of thy beloved.' Cling with life to the maid; First vague shadow of surmise Flits across her bosom young, Of a joy apart from thee, Free be she, fancy-free; Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, Nor the palest rose she fung From her summer diadem. Though thou loved her as thyself, As a self of purer clay, Though her parting dims the day, Stealing grace from all alive; Heartily know, When half-gods go, The gods arrive. TO ELLEN AT THE SOUTH THE green grass is bowing, The morning wind is in it; 'Tis a tune worth thy knowing, Though it change every minute. 'Tis a tune of the Spring; O'er ten thousand, thousand acres, Hark to the winning sound! They summon thee, dearest, Saying, We have dressed for thee the ground, Nor "O hasten;' 't is our time, Ere yet the red Summer Scorch our delicate prime, Loved of bee, the tawny hummer. "O pride of thy race! Sad, in sooth, it were to ours, If our brief tribe miss thy face, We poor New England flowers. Fairest, choose the fairest members June's glories and September's Thou shalt command us all, — Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover. "O come, then, quickly come! We are budding, we are blowing; And the wind that we perfume Sings a tune that's worth the knowing.' TO ELLEN AND Ellen, when the graybeard years And all the crowded Past appears A tiny scene of sun and shower, Then, if I read the page aright Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our lot, Thyself shalt own the page was bright, Well that we loved, woe had we not, When Mirth is dumb and Flattery's fled, When all but Love itself is dead And all but deathless Reason gone. TO EVA O FAIR and stately maid, whose eyes At the same torch that lighted mine; Thy sweet dominion o'er my will, Ah! let me blameless gaze upon |