I plant a heartful now:  some seed
  At least is sure to strike,
And yield—­what you’ll not pluck indeed,
  Not love, but, may be, like.

You’ll look at least on love’s remains,
  A grave’s one violet: 
Your look?—­that pays a thousand pains. 
  What’s death?  You’ll love me yet!

6. The Lost Mistress.

I.

All’s over, then:  does truth sound bitter
  As one at first believes? 
Hark, ‘tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter
  About your cottage eaves!

II.

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
  I noticed that, to-day;
One day more bursts them open fully
  —­You know the red turns grey.

III.

To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest? 
  May I take your hand in mine? 
Mere friends are we,—­well, friends the merest
  Keep much that I resign: 

IV.

For each glance of the eye so bright and black,
  Though I keep with heart’s endeavour,—­
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
  Though it stay in my soul for ever!—­

V.

Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
  Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
  Or so very little longer!

7. Home-Thoughts, from the Sea.

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;
“Here and here did England help me:  how can I help England?”—­say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

8. Epilogue.

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
  When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where—­by death, fools think, imprisoned—­
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
          —­Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 
  What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? 
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
          —­Being—­who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
  Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
          Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time
  Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
“Strive and thrive!” cry “Speed,—­fight on, fare ever
          There as here!”