Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, -Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces,-- Robert Browning [1812-1889] TO MARGUERITE YES: in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, We mortal millions live alone. But when the moon their hollows lights, The nightingales divinely sing; O then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent! Parts of a single continent. Now round us spreads the watery plain- Who ordered that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled? Matthew Arnold [1822-1888]. SEPARATION STOP!-not to me, at this bitter departing, Fresh be the wound, still-renewed be its smarting, Longing But, if the steadfast commandment of Nature Me let no half-effaced memories cumber! 947 Then, when we meet, and thy look strays towards me, Scanning my face and the changes wrought there: Who, let me say, is this stranger regards me, With the gray eyes, and the lovely brown hair? Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] LONGING COME to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day. Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, Or, as thou never camʼst in sooth, Come to me in my dreams, and then Matthew Arnold [1822-1888] DIVIDED I An empty sky, a world of heather, Purple of foxglove, yellow of broom; We two among them wading together, Shaking out honey, treading perfume. Crowds of bees are giddy with clover, Crowds of grasshoppers skip at our feet, Crowds of larks at their matins hang over, Thanking the Lord for a life so sweet. Flusheth the rise with her purple favor, We two walk till the purple dieth, And short dry grass under foot is brown, But one little streak at a distance lieth Green like a ribbon to prank the down. II Over the grass we stepped unto it, And God He knoweth how blithe we were! Never a voice to bid us eschew it: Hey the green ribbon that showed so fair! Hey the green ribbon! we kneeled beside it, Tinkle, tinkle, sweetly it sung to us, Divided Hand in hand, while the sun peered over, We lapped the grass on that youngling spring; III A dappled sky, a world of meadows, Flit on the beck; for her long grass parteth As hair from a maid's bright eyes blown back: And, lo, the sun like a lover darteth His flattering smile on her wayward track. Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather The beck grows wider, the hands must sever. He IV A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer, A little pain when the beck grows wider; 949 No backward path; ah! no returning; Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching,- The loud beck drowns them: we walk, and weep. V A yellow moon in splendor drooping, A tired queen with her state oppressed, Low by rushes and swordgrass stooping, Lics she soft on the waves at rest. The desert heavens have felt her sadness; We two walk on in our grassy places On either marge of the moonlit flood, With the moon's own sadness in our faces, Where joy is withered, blossom and bud. VI A shady freshness, chafers whirring; A cloud to the eastward snowy as curds. Bare grassy slopes, where kids are tethered, A rose-flush tender, a thrill, a quiver, |