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While, when you come not, what I do I do Thinking 'Now when he comes,' my sweetest 'when':

For one man is my world of all the men

This wide world holds; O love, my world is you. Howbeit, to meet you grows almost a pang Because the pang of parting comes so soon; My hope hangs waning, waxing, like a moon Between the heavenly days on which we meet: Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang When life was sweet because you called them sweet?

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I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season,-it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom yet for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such

A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,

May not the darkness hide it from my face? You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
Those who have gone before.

They will not keep you standing at that door. Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek? Yea, beds for all who come.

WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896)

THE GILLIFLOWER OF GOLD.
A golden gilliflower to-day

I wore upon my helm alway,
And won the prize of this tourney.

Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.1

However well Sir Giles might sit,
His sun was weak to wither it;
Lord Miles's blood was dew on it:
Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.

First touch of hand in hand-Did one but Although my spear in splinters flew,

know!

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Many in aftertimes will say of you

'He loved her '-while of me what will they say?

Not that I loved you more than just in play, For fashion's sake as idle women do.

Even let them prate; who know not what we knew

Of love and parting in exceeding pain,
Of parting hopeless here to meet again,
Hopeless on earth, and heaven is out of view.
But by my heart of love laid bare to you,
My love that you can make not void nor vain,
Love that foregoes you but to claim anew
Beyond this passage of the gate of death,
I charge you at the Judgment make it plain
My love of you was life and not a breath.

UP-HILL

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end.

From John's steel-coat, my eye was true;
I wheeled about, and cried for you,
Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.

Yea, do not doubt my heart was good, Though my sword flew like rotten wood, To shout, although I scarcely stood,

Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.

My hand was steady, too, to take
My axe from round my neck, and break
John's steel-coat up for my love's sake.

Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.

When I stood in my tent again,
Arming afresh, I felt a pain
Take hold of me, I was so fain-

Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée

To hear: "Honneur aux fils des preux!"'
Right in my ears again, and shew
The gilliflower blossomed new.

Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflée.

The Sieur Guillaume against me came,

Will the day's journey take the whole long His tabard bore three points of flame

day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

From a red heart; with little blame

Hah! hah! la belle jaune giroflie—

1 "Hah! hah! the beautiful yellow gilliflower !"

2 "Honor to the sons of the brave!"

3 hurt

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THE BLUE CLOSET.* The Damozels.

Lady Alice, lady Louise,
Between the wash of the tumbling seas
We are ready to sing, if so ye please:
So lay your long hands on the keys;
Sing, "Laudate pueri.''1

And ever the great bell overhead

Boomed in the wind a knell for the dead, Though no one tolled it, a knell for the dead. Lady Louise.

Sister, let the measure swell

Not too loud; for you sing not well

If you drown the faint boom of the bell;
He is weary, so am I.

And ever the chevron2 overhead
Flapped on the banner of the dead;
(Was he asleep, or was he dead?)
Lady Alice

Alice the Queen, and Louise the Queen,
Two damozels wearing purple and green,
Four lone ladies dwelling here
From day to day and year to year;
And there is none to let us go,

To break the locks of the doors below,
Or shovel away the heaped-up snow;
And when we die no man will know
That we are dead; but they give us leave,
Once every year on Christmas-eve,
To sing in the Closet Blue one song;
And we should be so long, so long,

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If we dared, in singing; for dream on dream, They float on in a happy stream;

Float from the gold strings, float from the keys,

Float from the opened lips of Louise;
But, alas! the sea-salt oozes through
The chinks of the tiles of the Closet Blue;
And ever the great bell overhead
Booms in the wind a knell for the dead,
The wind plays on it a knell for the dead.

They Sing All Together

How long ago was it, how long ago,

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He came to this tower with hands full of snow?

1 "Praise ye, youths." The beginning of the socalled Irish version of the familiar hymn, Te Deum Laudamus.

2 A V-shaped device.

*Written for a picture (a water-color) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The romantic theme, the

mediaeval remoteness, the color and sound. the sharpness of detall with the vagueness of general outline and setting, are all in the early Pre-Raphaelite manner. See Eng. Lit., pp. 370, 374.

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And ever the great bell overhead,

And the tumbling seas mourned for the dead; For their song ceased, and they were dead!

FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE
AN APOLOGY

Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,
I cannot ease the burden of your fears,
Or make quick-coming death a little thing,
Or bring again the pleasure of past years,
Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,
Or hope again for aught that I can say,
The idle singer of an empty day.

But rather, when aweary of your mirth,
From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh,
And, feeling kindly unto all the earth,
Grudge every minute as it passes by,
Made the more mindful that the sweet
die-

-Remember me a little then I pray,
The idle singer of an empty day.

7

days

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These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

FROM SIGURD THE VOLSUNG*

OF THE PASSING AWAY OF BRYNHILD

Once more on the morrow-morning fair shineth the glorious sun,

And the Niblung children labour on a deed that shall be done;

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, For out in the people's meadows they raise a

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Folk say, a wizard to a northern king At Christmas-tide such wondrous things did show,

That through one window men beheld the spring,

And through another saw the summer glow,
And through a third the fruited vines a-row,
While still, unheard, but in its wonted way,
Piped the drear wind of that December day. 35

So with this Earthly Paradise it is,
If ye will read aright, and pardon me,
Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss
Midmost the beating of the steely sea,
Where tossed about all hearts of men must be;

1 According to Greek legend, false dreams come through the gate of ivory, true dreams through the gate of horn.

bale2 on high,

The oak and the ash together, and thereon shall the Mighty lie;

*The Volsunga Saga is an older, Norse version of the legend which appears in German literature as the Nibelungenlied, and which has been made familiar in modern times by Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. It is the great Teutonic race epic. Sigurd (Siegfried, in the German version) is the grandson of Volsung, who was a descendant of Odin. Brynhild was originally a Valkyrie, one of Odin's "Choosers of the Slain," maidens who rode on white cloud-horses and visited battle-fields to select heroes for Odin's great hall, Valhalla. Sigurd wakened Brynhild from an enchanted sleep to the doom of mortal life and love, and they plighted troth. But their love was thwarted at the court of the Niblung princes, Gunnar, Hogni, and Guttorm, and their sister Gudrun, the children of Giuki. Through the witchcraft of Grimhild, Gudrun's mother, Sigurd is made to lose all memory of Brynhild and to marry Gudrun. Moreover, he is made to assist in bringing about the marriage of Brynhild to Gunnar. Later, as a result of rivalry, Guttorm surprises and slays Sigurd, but is himself slain by Sigurd's sword, the "Wrath." Then follows the portion of the tale here given the pathetic story of the means taken by Brynhild to rejoin Sigurd. Morris's metrical rendering of the entire legend extends to about ten thousand lines. 2 funeral pile

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