Her Face.

There is a something in her face
Which in no other I can trace,
And feelings sweet as music stir
When I gaze in her dreamy eyes,
And breathe a perfume, as it were,
From flowers in Paradise.
At morn, at noon and night it seems
As if I moved by faery streams,
A strange light on the leaves and grass;
As if her life-breath were the air
Through which the magic moments pass
In her dream-beauty there.
It is thought's paradise which she
Inhabits like a mystery,
Through which my feelings come and go
Like tunes which to her pulses stir;
And my life day by day, I trow,
Is one sweet dream of her.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Post Mortem.

When I have passed the bourne of ear and eye,
And thou my whereabouts no more canst tell;
When all I am is but a phantasy,
Seen in thy heart, to none else visible:
When haply slow time shall have faded then,
And thee too brought to thy departure here,
But call me in the spirit, and again
My soul, that was thy mate, shall answer, dear!
Then from the confines of that shadowy clime
As in a visionary light I'll come
To where, within the fading fields of time,
Thy soul waits mine, with whom to journey home
Till, with thy hand in mine, we take our way
Where all that we have been is ours for aye.

poem by Robert Crawford
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The Poet's Songs.

The copse-wood merely sows
Itself, not planted;
And so it is with those
Strange and enchanted
Moods that have taken root,
Bloomed, and e'en borne fruit,
Or e'er the poet knew't,
Beauty-haunted.
The little songs that fly,
When the lips parted
Let dreams of ear and eye
Forth, so warm-hearted:
Be it a joy or pain,
Each to chaunt is fain
What in the parent brain
Soothed or smarted.
This is the poet's dower,
None, none completer;
As if 'twere Love's own flower,
Than all flowers sweeter,

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poem by Robert Crawford
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Egoism.

Not as mine their thoughts who pass:
Each has his life's looking-glass
Limning therein the light and shade
His own entity has made.
I have my life's vision still
Coloured for me, good or ill,
And my point of view must be
But my own immortally.
Could I guess at theirs, or know
What shapes in their vision go.
Lift the veil by day and night
That's laid on another's light, —
They might with a fancy free
Get, too, at the gist of me,
And with a plebeian shout
Turn the Gods I worship out,
To be in a concourse lewd
Jeered at by the multitude,
While I with a reeling brain
Talked with Demons in the fane!

poem by Robert Crawford
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The Fruit Of Love's Desire.

The fruit of love's desire is sweet
For any man and maid to eat.
However ripened in time's air,
No other can with it compare.
'Tis like those apples 'of such price,
No tree can ever bear them twice;'
And only two may share it, so
That they would all its sweetness know.
It is so fine and fair a thing
And eaten with such passioning,
The eaters seem themselves to be
Fed on each other's mystery;
And when they have the sweet thing ate
Sigh for the lack of all things yet,
For once 'tis bitten to the core
The dearest dream of life is o'er,
And man and maid within time's waste
Another such may never taste.

poem by Robert Crawford
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At Camelot

Her maiden dreams were redolent of love,
Warm-bosomed as she breathed the passionate air
Of old romance, and did in fancy move
'Mong the gay knights who died for ladies fair;
Until she heard the thunder of the press,
And so became a lover; her heart rang
The note of love's alarm, his tenderness,
When in the onset all the tourney sang.
And she was one of the dead ladies who,
In beauty's blazon, to his misty bower
With Launcelot, when the Queen was gone, withdrew
Under the shadow of the tourney tower;
And, lilting to him through the gloaming, made
His heart a lyre whereon her passion played.

poem by Robert Crawford
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For Lillian

She was so dear, so fair. Her memory stays,
Even her dying robs me not of this,
That I have walked with her in mortal ways
Whose tender beauty now immortal is.
There are sweet flowers that bloom in ways forlorn
And sad sweet eyes whose beauty is a flower
Blown in the night to which there is no morn,
Dream-born and dying in its dewy bower;
And she was such a flower, her sweet eyes such;
The secret hours that only the heart knows
Thrill with the glamour of her tone and touch
Like music that is sweetest at the close,
Falling to death as falls the fairest thing
Beyond the power of love's recovering.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Night-Bound.

Comes the night that brings me rest,
Comes the dark that folds me in
This of all my nights the best,
Nights of virtue, nights of sin.
I can hear a water moan,
And it seems no mortal tide,
But my own grey life that's gone
With the darkness to abide.
Ah! beyond the veil I pierce —
See my pain and pleasure done
In a mouldering universe
Without stars and without sun!
Through my warm red veins the chill
Of Death's coming seems to creep,
Till the world grows ghasty still
To me in my lonely sleep
So I cease: this night is mine;
Other nights for other things!
Comes the gloom that is divine
With the peace for me it brings.

poem by Robert Crawford
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Birth And Death.

I who have known thee, Birth, must know Death too:
As old, old men their children's children fold
In their gaunt arms, and though their blood be cold
Feel their own youth burn in them as they view
The features that were theirs — each sign so true
To their own breath and blood, 'tis as retold
Their very youth was, when they are so old,
By those who nothing of their childhood knew.
So even Death but a new birth may be,
And in some other star beyond to-day,
When we have put the use of Earth away,
E'en like those old men's children's children we
May see ourselves rise from our own decay,
The very offspring of our verity.

poem by Robert Crawford
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In Verona.

Juliet will never rise
In her passion's paradise;
Dust is in her ears and eyes.
And time too, as all men know,
Has put by, with beauty's woe,
What remains of Romeo.
In that grave within the green
Since the dawn of death was seen
Nothing has been changed, I ween;
Nor shall their praise be unsown,
Like a bud each year new-blown
While Verona's name is known;
And the hearts of men shall come
To where Love has made his home
In their beauty's martyrdom.
Ah! the two that are so one
Since the dream of life was done: —
Would another life begun
With its dream for them too be
Mid the world's humanity

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poem by Robert Crawford
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