Edward Booth Loughran
Dead Leaves
When these dead leaves were green, love,
November's skies were blue,
And summer came with lips aflame,
The gentle spring to woo;
And to us, wandering hand in hand,
Life was a fairy scene,
That golden morning in the woods
When these dead leaves were green!
How dream-like now that dewy morn,
Sweet with the wattle's flowers,
When love, love, love was all our theme,
And youth and hope were ours!
Two happier hearts in all the land
There were not then, I ween,
Than those young lovers' — yours and mine —
When these dead leaves were green.
How gaily did you pluck these leaves
From the acacia's bough,
To mark the lyric we had read —
I can repeat it now!
While came the words, like music sweet,
Your smiling lips between —
"So fold my love within your heart,"
When these dead leaves were green!
How many springs have passed since then?
Ah, wherefore should we count,
The years that sped, like waters fled
From Time's unstaying fount?
We've had our share of happiness,
Our share of care have seen;
But love alone has never flown
Since these dead leaves were green.
Your heart is kind and loving still,
Your face to me as fair,
As when, that morn, the sunshine played
Amid your golden hair.
So, dearest, sweethearts still we'll be,
As we have ever been,
And keep our love as fresh and true
As when these leaves were green.
Isolation
Man lives alone; star-like, each soul
In its own orbit circles ever;
Myriads may by or round it roll —
The ways may meet, but mingle never.
Self-pois'd, each soul its course pursues
In light or dark, companionless:
Drop into drop may blend the dews —
The spirit's law is loneliness.
If seemingly two souls unite,
'Tis but as joins yon silent mere
The stream that through it, flashing bright,
Carries its waters swift and clear.
The fringes of the rushing tide
May on the lake's calm bosom sleep —
Its hidden spirit doth abide
Apart, still bearing toward the deep.
O Love, to me more dear than life!
O Friend, more faithful than a brother!
How many a bitter inward strife
Our souls have never told each other!
We journey side by side for years,
We dream our lives, our hopes are one —
And with some chance-said word appears
The spanless gulf, so long unknown!
For candour's want yet neither blame;
Even to ourselves but half-confessed,
Glows in each heart some silent flame,
Blooms some hope-violet of the breast.
And temptings dark, and struggles deep
There are, each soul alone must bear,
Through midnight hours unblest with sleep,
Through burning noontides of despair.
And kindly is the ordinance sent
By which each spirit dwells apart —
Could Love or Friendship live, if rent
The "Bluebeard chambers of the heart"?
Ishmonie
The traveller tells how, in that ancient clime
Whose mystic monuments and ruins hoar
Still struggle with the antiquary's lore,
To guard the secrets of a by-gone time,
He saw, uprising from the desert bare,
Like a white ghost, a city of the dead,
With palaces and temples wondrous fair,
Where moon-horn'd Isis once was worshipped.
But silence, like a pall, did all enfold,
And the inhabitants were turn'd to stone —
Yea, stone the very heart of every one!
Once to a rich man I this tale re-told.
"Stone hearts! A traveller's myth!" — he turn'd aside,
As Hunger begg'd, pale-featured and wild-eyed.