If with love thy heart has burned;

If thy love is unreturned;

Hide thy grief within thy breast,

Though it tear thee unexpressed;

For when love has once departed

From the eyes of the false-hearted,

And one by one has torn off quite

The bandages of purple light;

Though thou wert the loveliest

Form the soul had ever dressed,

Thou shalt seem, in each reply,

A vixen to his altered eye;

Thy softest pleadings seem too bold,

Thy praying lute will seem to scold;

Though thou kept the straightest road,

Yet thou errest far and broad.

If Love his moment overstay,

Hatred's swift repulsions play.

For Destiny never swerves

Nor yields to men the helm.

But man crouches and blushes,

Absconds and conceals;

He creepeth and peepeth,

He palters and steals;

Infirm, melancholy,

Jealous glancing around,

An oaf, an accomplice,

He poisons the ground.

All substances the cunning chemist Time

Melts down into that liquor of my life.

Give me truths;

For I am weary of the surfaces,

And die of inanition.

Daughter of Heaven and Earth, coy Spring,

With sudden passion languishing,

Teaching Barren moors to smile,

Painting pictures mile on mile,

Holds a cup with cowslip-wreaths,

Whence a smokeless incense breathes.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Fate

Spring is strong and virtuous,

Broad-sowing, cheerful, plenteous,

Quickening underneath the mould

Grains beyond the price of gold.

So deep and large her bounties are,

That one broad, long midsummer day

Shall to the planet overpay

The ravage of a year of war.

For thou, O Spring! canst renovate

All that high God did first create.

Nature, hating art and pains,

Baulks and baffles plotting brains;

Casualty and Surprise

Are the apples of her eyes.

The sun goes down, and with him takes

The coarseness of my poor attire;

The fair moon mounts, and aye the flame

Of Gypsy beauty blazes higher.

Only to children children sing,

Only to youth will spring be spring.

All is now secure and fast;

Not the gods can shake the Past;

Flies-to the adamantine door

Bolted down forevermore.

None can reënter there,--

No thief so politic,

No Satan with a royal trick

Steal in by window, chink, or hole,

To bind or unbind, add what lacked,

Insert a leaf, or forge a name,

New-face or finish what is packed,

Alter or mend eternal Fact.

The wings of Time are black and white,

Pied with morning and with night.

Gold and iron are good

To buy iron and gold.

Fear, Craft and Avarice

Cannot rear a State.