Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,

Free as an Arab

Of thy beloved.1

Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,

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 flung

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; 'T is a tune worth thy knowing, Though it change every minute.

'Tis a tune of the Spring;
Every year plays it over
To the robin on the wing,
And to the pausing lover.

O'er ten thousand, thousand acres,
Goes light the nimble zephyr;
The Flowers tiny sect of Shakers
Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!

They summon thee, dearest,

--

Saying, 'We have dressed for thee the ground, Nor yet thou appearest.

"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
Of our lithe society;
June's glories and September's
Show our love and piety.

April's cowslip, summer's clover, To the gentian in the fall,

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 Have brought us to life's evening hour,

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,
And mute thy music's dearest tone,

When all but Love itself is dead
And all but deathless Reason gone.

TO EVA

O FAIR and stately maid, whose eyes
Were kindled in the upper skies

At the same torch that lighted mine;
For so I must interpret still

Thy sweet dominion o'er my will,
A sympathy divine.

Ah! let me blameless gaze upon
Features that seem at heart my own;

Nor fear those watchful sentinels,
Who charm the more their glance forbids,
Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids,
With fire that draws while it repels.