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A CONCEIT.

Oh, touch that rosebud! it will bloom-
My lady fair!

A passionate red in dim green gloom,
A joy, a splendor, a perfume

That sleeps in air.

You touched my heart; it gave a thrill
Just like a rose

That opens at a lady's will;
Its bloom is always yours, until

You bid it close.

MORTIMER COLLINS.

MY KING.

You are all that I have to live for,
All that I want to love,

All that the whole world holds for me,
Of faith in a world above.

You came, and it seemed too mighty

For my human heart to hold,

It seemed in its sacred glory

Like a glimpse through the gates of gold,

Like a life in the primal Eden,

Created and formed anew— This charm of a perfect manhood That I realize in you.

MY KING.

God created me a woman
With a nature just as true
As the blue eternal ocean,

As the heavens over you.

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And you are mine till your Maker calls you,

Your soul and your body, Sweet!

Your breath and the whole of your being,

From your kingly head to your feet; Your eyes and the light that is in them, Your lips with their maddening wine, Your arms with their passionate clasp, my king,

Your body and soul are mine!

No power whatsoever,

No will but God's alone,

Can take you from my keeping,
You are His and mine alone.

I know not when, if ever,

I know not where, or how, Death's hand may try the fetters That bind me here and now; But some day, when God beckons, Where rise His fronded palms, My soul shall cross the river,

And lay you in His arms;

Forever and forever

Beyond the silent sea,

You will rest in the Arms Eternal,
And still belong to me!

DO YOU?

Do you feel sometimes in your dreaming
The weight of my head on your breast?
Or the velvety touch of my kisses

On your lips in passion impressed?

Do you hold me sometimes in your dreaming
In a rapturous clasp on your heart?
Or cry in the depth of your yearning
""Tis cruel to keep us apart?"

Does my hand with its lingering caresses
Touch yours with its magic again,
Till starting you wake from the pressure
To find that your dreaming was vain?

Though light as the fall of a rose leaf,

You'd feel the sweet weight of my kiss,
And starting you'd waken to kiss me,
And taste Love's ineffable bliss?

Ah! never again shall I see you,

Nor look in your proud grand face, Ne'er feel the sweet balm of your kisses, Or thrill to your tender embrace.

PLATONIC.

For our lives lie asunder forever,

More wide than the cruel sea,

But I love you! I love you! I love you!
And in dreams I will linger with thee.

PLATONIC.

I knew it the first of the summer-
I knew it the same at the end-
That you and your love were plighted,
But couldn't you be my friend?
Couldn't we sit in the twilight,
Couldn't we talk on the shore,
With only a pleasant friendship
To bind us, and nothing more?

There was never a word of nonsense
Spoken between us two,

Though we lingered oft in the garden
Till the roses were wet with dew.
We touched on a thousand subjects-
The moon, and the stars above,

But our talks were tinctured with science,
With never a hint of love.

"A wholly platonic friendship," You said I had proved to you, "Could bind a man and a woman

The whole long season through,

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With never a hint of folly,

Though both are in their youth." What would you have said, my lady, If you had known the truth?

Had I done what my mad heart prompted-
Gone down on my knees to you,
And told you my passionate story,
There in the dusk and dew;
My burning, burdensome story,
Hidden and hushed so long;

My story of hopeless loving

Say, would you have thought it wrong?

But I fought with my heart, and conqueredI hid my wound from sight;

You were going away in the morning,

And I said a calm good-night.

But now, when I sit in the twilight,
Or when I walk by the sea,
That friendship, quite "platonic,"
Comes surging over me.

And a passionate longing fills me,

For the roses, the dusk, and the dewFor the beautiful summer vanished

For the moonlit talks-and you.

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