Path Flower, and Other Verses

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.

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