THE LOVER’S DAY

I

Gorse-plains that flower their gold into the streams

Beneath the opal blossoms of the sky;

Sea-floods that weave their blue and purple seams;

White sails that lift the billows as they fly:

Not these in their abounding rapture vie

With love’s diviner dreams.

II

Those lovers tire not when the sun is pale;

No statelier awning than a bristled tree

With branches cedared by the salten gale,

Stretched back, as if with wings that cannot flee:

They linger, and the sun departs by sea;

He spreads his crimson sail.

46III

They watch him as he piles his busy deck

With golden treasure; as his sail expands;

They see him sink; they gaze upon the wreck

Through the still twilight of the silvery sands.

One cloud is left to the deserted lands:

The blue-set moon’s cold fleck.

IV

They linger though the pageant hath gone by,

The opal cloud is lit o’er sea and plain;

The moon is full of one day’s memory,

And tells the tale of Nature o’er again,

Its glory mingled in the soul’s refrain

Under that lover’s sky.

47