WARNING.

When enwrapped in rosy pleasure,
  Our careless pulses beat,
  With a rhythm sweet, sweet,
To the music’s merry measure.

When world waves rise around us,
  With soft transparent weight,
  Light in seeming, yet so great,
The liquid chains have bound us.

Then softly downward falling,
  If we listen, we can hear,
  From a purer atmosphere,
A warning and a calling.

’Tis not uttered to our ear,
  To our spirit it is spoken,
  In the wonderful, unbroken
Heavenly speech that spirits hear.

Strange and solemn doth it roll
  Downward like a yearning cry,
  From that belfry far on high,
Warning, calling to our soul.

Ever, ever, doth it roll,
  Our angel guards the tower,
  Ringing, ringing, every hour,
Warning, calling to our soul.

GENIEVE TO HER LOVER.

I turn the key in this idle hour
  Of an ivory box, and looking, lo—­
See only dust—­the dust of a flower;
  The waters will ebb, the waters will flow,
And dreams will come, and dreams will go,
                   Forever.

Oh, friend, if you and I should meet
  Beneath the boughs of the bending lime,
Should you in the same low voice repeat
  The tender words of the old love rhyme,
  It could not bring back the same old time,
                   Never.

When you laid this rose against my brow,
  I was quite unused to the ways of men,
With my trusting heart; I am wiser now,
  So I smile, remembering my heart-throbs then,
  The dust of a rose cannot blossom again,
                   Never.

The brow that you praised has colder grown,
  And hearts will change, I suppose they must,
A rose to be lasting, should blossom in stone,
  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
  Dead are the rose, the love, and the trust,
                   Forever.

THE WILD ROSE.

In a waste of yellow sand, on the brow of a dreary hill,
  A slight little slip of a rose struggled up to the light,
The seed maybe was sown there by the south wind’s idle will,
  But there it grew and blossomed, pale and white. 
Only one flower it bore, and that was frail and small,
But I think it was brave to try to grow at all.

In groves of fair Cashmere, or sheltered garden of kings,
  Sweet with a thousand flowers, with birds of paradise
Fanning her blushing cheeks with their glowing wings,
  Praising her deepening bloom with their great bright eyes,
Life would have been a pleasure instead of a toil,
To my pale little patient rose of the sandy soil.

Did she ever sadly think of her wasted life,
  Folding her wan weak hands so helpless and still;
And the great oak by her sheltering glad bird life,
  And the thirsty meadows praising the running rill;
She could hear the happy work-day song of the busy brook,
While she, poor thing, could only stand and look.