BALLAD

When I with Death have gone on quest,

And grief is mellowed in your breast;

When you do nothing fret

If jest come gently in with tea,

And Purr is stroked for want of me;

When thought robust bestirs your mind,

And with a candid start you find

The world must move

To living love

And you forthright on travel set;

I do not ask you strive to keep

Awake the woe that winks for sleep,

Or swell the lessening tear;

I do not ask; dear to me still

May be the eyes regret would fill;

And, sooth, in vain I'd Nature sue

To go a little out for you;

But whether‘ tis

Or that or this

Is from the matter there and here.

Forget the kisses dying not

Till each a thousand more begot;

Such easy progeny

You with small trouble still may have;

( Though women die, love has no grave;)

Forget the quaint, the nest-born ways,

And ponder things more to my praise,

That I may long

Be worth a song

Though deep in tongueless clay I be.

Admit my eye, than yours less keen,

Still knew a bead of Hippocrene

From baser bubbles bright;

My ear could catch, or short or long,

The echo of true-hammered song;

And many a book we journeyed through;

Some turned us home again,‘ tis true,

( Not all who pen

Are more than men,)

And some, like stars, outwore the night.

Say I could break a lance with Fate,

Took half, at least, my troubles straight,

( Let women have their boast;)

Homed well with chance, and passing where

The gods kept house would take a chair,

Perchance at ease, with naught ado,

With Jove would toss a quip or two;

The nectar stale,

A mug of ale

On goodly earth would serve a toast.

And if I left thee by a stile

Where thou didst choose to dream, the while

I sought a farther mead,

Or clomb a ridge for flowers that wore

Of earth the less, of stars the more,

I hastened back, confess of me,

To lay my treasure on thy knee;

Nor didst thou hear

Of stone or brere,

Or how my hidden feet did bleed.

And in the piping season when

The whole round world takes heart again

To rise and dance with Spring;

When robin drives the snow-wind home,

And sweetened is the warmèd loam,

When deeper root the violets,

And every bud its fear forgets

With upward glance

For lovers’ chance

In Venus’ dear and fateful ring;

Let not a thought of my cold bed

Bechill thy warm heart beating red,

And thy new ardours dim;

But if, good hap, you rove where I

Beneath the twinkling moss then lie,

Be glad to see me decked so gay,

( Spring's the best handmaid without pay,)

I like things new,

In season too,

And fain must smile to be so trim.

Then hie thee to some bonny brake

Another mate to woo and take,

And as thy soul to love.

Rise with the dew, stay not the noon,

What's good cannot be found too soon,

The wind will not be always south,

Nor like a rose is every mouth,

Time's quick to press,

Do thou no less,

And may the night thy wisdom prove.

And as all love doth live again

In great or small that loved hath been,

Keep this sole troth with me,—

Forget my name, my form, my face,

But meet me still in every place,

Since we are what we love, and I

Loved everything beneath the sky.

So may I long

Be worth a song,

Though I who sang forgotten be.