The Heart's Own Day

This is the heart's own day:     With dreaming eyes     Life seems to look away     Beyond the skies     Into some long-gone May.     A May that can not die;     Across whose hills     Youth's heart goes singing by,     'Mid daffodils,     With Love the young and shy.     Love of the slender form     And elvish face;     Who with uplifted arm     Points to one place     A place of oldtime charm.     Where once the lilies grew     For Love to twine,     With violets, white and blue,     And columbine,     Of gold and crimson hue.     Gone is the long-ago;     Gone like the wind;     And Love we used to know     Sits dumb and blind,     With locks of winter snow.     And by him Memory     Sits sketching back     Into the used-to-be,     In white and black,     One flower on his knee.     One rose, whose crimson gleams     Like Youth's glad heart,     And fills the day with dreams,     And is a part     Of the old love it seems.     That touches with the tints     Of Faeryland     This day; and makes a prince     Of Samarcand,     Of him, whose hand     Hers held in dreams long since.