poetry.txt

He wandered, he wondered, and he thought.    He wandered through the streets he knew so well;    Yet still he had never been here.    He was wandering across the world.    He wandered through the dark dismal world;    An old, rotting backpack on his back.    An even older, rotting hobo's sack over his shoulder.    Even the clouds seemed sad, as if they too knew his sorrow.    They moved across the sun, blotting out his only hope of happiness.    He wandered past houses, red, white, even a few strange colors,    Yet all were dull, as if they had lost their brightness.    They were all dead, all of them;    Just as everyone inside them was dead.    He wondered if the world would ever be as it was before he started    wandering.    What was the world like before he started wandering?    He couldn't remember.    All he knew was that there were others then.    More people than the one he knew:    Himself.    He wondered if there would ever be any more people;    He was begining to hate trees and plants.    All he ever saw was plant life.    He wondered if he had truly ever seen anything besides this.    He thought about what the world would be like.    After he had changed it.    After he had found what he was looking for.    He wanders, he wonders, and he thinks.    Across the world.    Searching,              Searching,      Say, what is the spell, when her fledgelings are chee[ping,     That lures the bird home to her nest?Or wakes the tired mother, whose infant is weeping,     To cuddle and croon it to rest?What the magic that charms the glad babe in her arms,     Till it cooes with the voice of the dove?'Tis a secret, and so let us whisper it low-     And the name of the secret is Love!          For I think it is Love,          For I feel it is Love,     For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!Say, whence is the voice that, when anger is burning,     Bids the whirl of the tempest to cease?That stirs the vexed soul with an aching- a yearning     For the brotherly hand-grip of peace?Whence the music that fills all our being- that thrills     Around us, beneath, and above?'Tis a secret: none knows how it comes, how it goes-     But the name of the secret is Love!For I feel it is Love,Say, whose is the skill that paints valley and hill,     Like a picture so fair to the sight?That flecks the green meadow with sunshine and shadow,     Till the little lamb leap with delight?'Tis a secret untold to hearts cruel and cold,             Though 'tis sung, by the angels above,In notes that ring clear for the ears that can hear-     For I'm sure it is nothing but Love!    Broken hearts and shattered dreamsHappens to me a lot it seemsAn endless cycle of despairIt seems no one really caresSometimes.A closed heart, it seems to beIs my only defense from meWhen I open up some moreThe world quickly slams the doorHurting.               We've known each other for a whileNow it will hurt when I see your smileFor I thought I knew you fairly wellBut now I'm trapped in my lonely hellDying.You know that we will stay friendsFor true friendships have no endsI made my heart as clear as glassNow the hurt inside me will passSlowly.......I'm over the pain, but not completelyThe fire smoulders and my heart beats weaklyThe haze is gone, and clear are my eyesWhat I felt for you is gone from our livesCompletely.But the effects of this eventThe aftershocks I can't preventThey will never really go awayAnd I will always find it hard to sayTruthfully.Because this has happened beforeIt's happened so many times beforeAnd I'll never recover from anyoneIt's hard to believe that I've never wonHonestly.I've tried before and always been hurtSo many times been made to feel like dirtI always seem to find the one whoWill always, without fail, say noDestroying.And now that it's over, now that it's doneI hope that someday I will find the oneThat won't say no, that won't turn awayThat will actually want me to say"I love you."We don't know about other peoples, but we thinks that we likes to refer toourselves in the plurals.    (Kind of a Gollum - Hobbit - sorta thingy...), we thinks death poetry is cool... thats why we listen to Metallica...okay, it's not like death metal, but it is pretty morbid... but alsouplifting and relaxing... as we always say "Metallica is the language oflove!"Falling swiftly into the netherBringing with a sense of lossAs if something more should have been doneBefore the last line was writtenHeedless of their calling after      Can't return so just move onThe realization must be avoidedOr you'll disappear We wrote that while on-line here.  Pretty nifty We think. Sorry it doesn'trhyme, but that would be to difficult without a thesaurus.... hehehe...We must continue this Plurality... Hmmm... we're thinking shizophrenia, butwhat do we know.                            I agree. The house plant plagiarizes the field of wild flowers; imitation is inevitable. My mother at 27 was probably looking at her Pittosporum japonica and talking to herself. She married late; I was born when she was 41. It's never too late to put the self together with parts of other people, to become a piece of the world they likewise possess. "My daughter is . . ." she tells her friends. "My daughter is two; she's learning to talk; I've taught her every word she knows." The world can continue to exist only by repeating itself. In Magritte's Plagiarism, made in 1960 or about twelve years after myself, a field of flowering bushes grows inside the silhouette of a potted plant, species unknown but a late bloomer no doubt. We late bloomers tend to be self-effacing. I have sisters. I have teachers who are also women. I grow up as in a convent. The japonica has white flowers, waxy, well protected. Two mirrors hang on opposite walls of the small attic room. In one, I see my pigtails and blue corduroy dress in alternating front and back views 12 or 21 times depending on what year it is and how well I've learned to count. The line of little girls curves out of sight, but I'm sure it's endless, like numbers. It was an arrangement Tantalus could have traded for his pears and pool with no other gain than a change of scenery. Putting one eye in the proper position to see myself multiplied ad infinitum meant my head got in the way (I have since found this to be the main reason infinity remains undisturbed). Trying to get my head out of the way without moving my eyes was an occupation that gave me numerous headaches and glasses before I was five. Older philosophers have gotten worse results from similar exercises. There are other mirrors. I will fill the ungainly silhouette of my mother's mother, the one who showed me I would never grow up to be a little old lady, that I will become a large one instead. My future still curves like the arc of eighteen little girls and exhibits the same perversity: leaned into, it disappears. But now I know it is concealing something more interesting than repetition. It ends. One thing the mothers and sisters and teachers were careful not to mention but that grandmothers boldly engaged in as if it didn't matter what anybody said, was dying, walking into the empty mirror just out of sight, darkening to a silhouette in which someone else appears, someone familiar -- a girl running through a weedy field, a woman watering a house plant and muttering -- someone almost the same.contentsThe Garden in the MiddlePanes and eggs make fragile dozens: two times six in cardboard nests, food for angels who eat cake; three times four the membrances between weathers. Frames hold themselves in wooden hugs that keep the world together, the glass a cubist with twelve angles on what is: peach tree; sea flexing; perhaps a house being painted blue. Here, a Q: a british line. A dozen people wait to buy beer in the sculpture garden. English sparrows and leaves also stand in lines together, higher than the humans. Big plants digest sunlight and rumble in their juices. People through the queue sit to tea-cakes and quiches at tables made of metal imitating lace: ornate with curlicues, the iron legs are painted white as eggs. Dozens of dozens of windows surround the lines of this and that: the museum looks out, and in, at its informal center. The courtyard a disordered game board: tables white squares, flagstones grey, both scattered crazily. Couples play hearts everywhere. Queens and pawns and wandering knights take cues. Jokers coin jingles and wink. Second fiddles fiddle with their drinks. And hundreds of visions of the light touching things pass through the tiny panes of eyes each instant. Hands hold the light up as they gesture, conducting conversations. When the people in the garden talk, they are what they say. When they are quiet their bodies are maps of the cosmos, hands five-pointed stars. Fish dive in the blue streaks of their arms, angels rise in their smiles. Rings and bracelets flash like waves landing, waves fragile as glass, as white shells washed ashore.Figures: Herring CoveGulls sit about with straight faces as though they were not surprised to walk on water, as though they were here the last time the bay froze, a hundred years ago. They rise and squawk and fight above the floes or ride them in neat lines; as smart, in their white uniforms, as miniature midshipmen.                     They should review their charts, for half the fleet lies jumbled on the beach--great blocks like broken numbers dropped from some celestial computation rounded off.                     These grand pianos, polar bears, salt barges, the sea's spare syllables packed in ice--all have a second shadow: melting, they etch their images into the beach.                        Surely after their sailing drills are over sea birds study the prints of dark and prodded sand, short -lived fossils of a slight ice age; for recognizing the instant at which drip and drip and drip combine to fix a figure in the sand is an exercise for mystics, the reverse of seeing through a rainstorm to its single drops, through a rising flock to its composite flights. The beached hulls are shoulder high but sinking, unbuttoning their gray crystals one by one and loosing them, carelessly, like small talk; dissolving, topside, into mist.                Here you and I are rudly upright figures; we walk among the non-commissioned battleships on which the warm air has designs of reducing to row-boats; look, we are strung with them along an abacus -- with these gull-crews, ice-boats, this watery slip of a globe, we are sliding toward a sum who yet work our own passages through the wheeling world.LibrettiA. Acacia. flowering and an archway. A round ambush = an abyssinian cat. Consider lines as small events: a curled cat uncurling. Consider events as places to live, and      paragraphing                as paper sculpture. A polygon has many angels. How many cousins to the ounce? How many weasels to the once? Consider the shapes breath makes: words            clouds coins in the blood florins. A flourish. . Two parts. Often it does. mountain and river. First loss lasts and fills itself with glosses. B. the glass blower. His breath closes open air, makes spaces into shapes. Bottles            clear or amber a green glass a blue dress: he says can I look at them all all at once.    Eyes small rooms to hold worlds            cities, woods and the wide shadows of words travelling toward the sun. She says may I look at you. . is not like that of a building which is structure on crutches. The sails of the woods were awake. Deeper than rivers forgotten dearer than trees and bushes clear like the music of the birds of the forest of light, bright like the fur of bees or of foxes in the snow and like the deer that come and go, not falling not holding on we steadily meet. Coming and going is neither perfect nor poor, the sails of the forest are open and green. A frond a friend a fern uncurls. Pleased to be pleased.A Fur Piecefor Teresa who saw the cat cross the street to get to the adagea likely story. The cat in the first sentence resembles a small bush. a pond filled with reeds. On the terrace Teresa with a bunch of fruit prepares to pare. Waxy scraps construct another fruit upon the floor. She ponders. Its likeness is half strange. semiquaver. He crosses quick as that or quicker. No adage crossed his mind.      a middle like a C. In the middle of a pounce the cat      resembles nothing so much as. a pounce. The open mind complicates space into a street, traffic whizzing by, opaque. The cat merely goes and comes. a short play. He crouches near Teresa who is halving pears, edible loot. looks as she opens their yellow light. The fattest cat can fit into the thinnest plot.      coda. a plausible tale.      Aphorism at rest, he becomes      touchstone, for good luck, for bad: a curious      fact. The cat at the end of the fable      is just another cat.      a pond. a shrub.                                                                            A hope of leaves and hollows,a breaking nest, a crest of graniteand unquarried moss. It’s softwintering a shade between greenand gray. The hope of colors forwhich there is no word develops andthen fades. Uncaptured and un-impressedin a kind of precision in dissolution.Or in silence and the desire to trespassand hold where the roots’ incision splits. Someinevitable gesture or quantity in monochromeand grateful light. And still the distancebetween tongue and sight containedin each body and measured as a factorof attempt. Approach. Carefully mantainedfirst to shimmer and then break at the horizon.Where the eye seeks motion, a threshing upor fluttering, or blurring of wings and leaves.Smelling of sweet resin the Aleppo pines’shadows grow taller by the hour. Two identicaltwin boys chase each other through the shadows,the one who’s ten minutes older yelling,I’m gonna kill you while the younger onelaughs, Kill me, kill me if you can!Day by day these teatime mortarskeep pecking at the blast wall that the boyshave grown so used to they just keep right on playing.If they weren’t here in front of me, I’d find themhard to imagine, just as I sometimes findmy own twin brother hard to imagine.I’m supposed to be doing a storyon soldiers, what they do to keep frombeing frightened, but all I can think aboutis how Tim would chase me or I’d chase himand we’d yell, I’m gonna kill you, just likethese brothers do, so alive in their bodies,just as Tim who is so alive will one day not be:will it be me or him who first dies?But I came here to do a story on soldiersand how they keep watching out for deathand manage to fight and die without going crazy—the boys squat down to look at ants climbingthrough corrugated bark, the wavering antennaetapping up and down the tree reminding meof the soldier across the barracks sittingstill inside himself, listening to his nerveswhile his eyes peer out at something I can’t see—when Achilles’ immortal mother cameto her grieving son, knowing he would soondie, and gave him his armor and kept the wormsfrom the wounds of his dead friend, Patroclus, she,a goddess, knew she wouldn’t be allowedto keep those same worms from her son’s body.I know I’m not his father, he’s not my son,but he looks so young, young enough to bemy son—sitting on his bunk, watching out for death,trying to fight and die without going crazy, hereaches for his rifle, breaks it down,dust cover, spring, bolt carrier with piston,wiping it all down with a rag and oil,cleaning it for the second time this houras shadows shifting through the pinesbury him and the little boys and Timand me in non-metaphorical, real life darknesswhere I’m supposed to be doing a story.When, at the end, the children wanted to add glitter to their valentines, I said no. I said nope, no, no glitter, and then, when they started to fuss, I found myself saying something my brother’s football coach used to bark from the sidelines when one of his players showed signs of being human: oh come on now, suck it up. That’s what I said to my children. Suck what up? my daughter asked, and, because she is so young, I told her I didn’t know and never mind, and she took that for an answer. My children are so young when I turn off the radio as the news turns to counting the dead or naming the act, they aren’t even suspicious. My children are so young they cannot imagine a world like the one they live in. Their God is still a real God, a whole God, a God made wholly of actions. And I think they think I work for that God. And I know they will someday soon see everything and they will know about everything and they will no longer take never mind for an answer. The valentines would’ve been better with glitter, and my son hurt himself on an envelope, and then, much later, when we were eating dinner, my daughter realized she’d forgotten one of the three Henrys in her class. How can there be three Henrys in one class? I said, and she said, Because there are. And so, before bed we took everything out again—paper and pens and stamps and scissors—and she sat at the table with her freshly washed hair parted smartly down the middle and wrote    ,  T.? and she did it so carefully, I could hardly stand to watch.when they talk about the tortured genius, somebody always brings up van gogh— how he swallowed yellow paint because he wanted to put the sunshine inside himself. how his psychosis was probably the result of lead poisoning. they call him a miracle, but what i see is a man who was so sad, he found a beautiful way to kill himself.they say, “it’s awful isn’t it?” they say, “it’s always the talented ones who go before their time.” and me, a nine year old kid who’s always been told they were so talented wonders when i am going to die.we study them in school, the tortured artists. look at all the poets who killed themselves what would their work have been without their depression? it’s it beautiful, isn’t it sad? as if depression is a parlor trick— pull it out at parties, impress all your friends. as if depression isn’t seeing how long you can go between showers before somebody notices or pizza rolls for dinner three nights in a row and then nothing the night after, because going to the store is an impossibility that you have not yet gathered the courage to conquer.it is the least beautiful thing i’ve ever seen and we call it the mark of an artist to stand in the center of an ocean and see nothing but desert. to be seated at a feast, but still swallowing sand.depression is the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint—art is a coping mechanism. van gogh is good because when he had nothing, he had paint. when he was empty, he had paint. when the world was awful, he had paint. when he hated himself, he didn’t hate the paint. he whitewashed over his own masterpieces, because it was never about being famous, it was about doing the one thing that made sense when everything else didn’t.and they say, “without his illness, we never would have gotten all—this.” because they value his art more than his sanity because god forbid you lead a happy life and leave nothing to remember you by.The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a grapefruit into a juice glass. I scraped the ashes from the frying pan and rinsed the butter off the counter. I washed the dishes and folded the towels.The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love. Not with the boy down the street or the middle school principal. Not with the everyday jogger or the grocer who always left the avocados out of the bag. I fell in love with my mother and the way she sat on the floor of my room holding each rock from my collection in her palms until they grew dark with sweat. I fell in love with my father down at the river as he placed my note into a bottle and sent it into the current. With my brother who once believed in unicorns but who now sat in his desk at school trying desperately to believe I still existed.The morning after I killed myself, I walked the dog. I watched the way her tail twitched when a bird flew by or how her pace quickened at the sight of a cat. I saw the empty space in her eyes when she reached a stick and turned around to greet me so we could play catch but saw nothing but sky in my place. I stood by as strangers stroked her muzzle and she wilted beneath their touch like she did once for mine.The morning after I killed myself, I went back to the neighbors’ yard where I left my footprints in concrete as a two year old and examined how they were already fading. I picked a few daylilies and pulled a few weeds and watched the elderly woman through her window as she read the paper with the news of my death. I saw her husband spit tobacco into the kitchen sink and bring her her daily medication.The morning after I killed myself, I watched the sun come up. Each orange tree opened like a hand and the kid down the street pointed out a single red cloud to his mother.The morning after I killed myself, I went back to that body in the morgue and tried to talk some sense into her. I told her about the avocados and the stepping stones, the river and her parents. I told her about the sunsets and the dog and the beach.The morning after I killed myself, I tried to unkill myself, but couldn’t finish what I started.Last night, we fled, close locked, in sweet embrace,Across the empty kingdom men call "Space."So deep the solitude, I could but feelYour fear within. It made my senses reel.I clasped you closer, with encircling arm,As though to shield you from impending harmAnd like a zephyr, from the sun-kissed South,I felt the pressure of your trembling mouth. A flame shot through my soul, in that first kiss.I was on fire. I knew no thought but this;I loved you--mind, heart, body, brain and soul.And had--since centuries first began to roll.And when your melting mouth had answered mine,Within your eyes, a new-born light divineProclaimed the wondrous miracle was done,And our two souls had melted into one.Oh! idiot Earth, to waste the dew of youth,Along the borderlands of perfect truth!Oh! dolts and dullards, with your feet of clay!To shun the glorious light of perfect day!In that first kiss, the past was all laid bare.The future years, transparent as the airIn swift procession, swept across our pathAnd left me drunk, with love's sweet aftermath.If rightly tuneful bards decide,If it be fix'd in Love's decrees,That Beauty ought not to be triedBut by its native power to please,Then tell me, youths and lovers, tell--What fair can Amoret excel?Beholt that bright unsullied smile,And wisdom speaking in her mien:Yet--she so artless all the while,So little studious to be seen--We naught but instant gladness know,Nor think to whom the gift we owe.But neither music, nor the powersOf youth and mirth and frolic cheer,Add half the sunshine to the hours,Or make life's prospect half so clear,As memory brings it to the eyeFrom scenes where Amoret was by.This, sure, is Beauty's happiest part;This gives the most unbounded sway;This shall enchant the subject heartWhen rose and lily fade away;And she be still, in spite of Time,Sweet Amoret in all her prime.Gracious and lovable and sweet,She made his jaded pulses beat,And made the glare of streets grow dimAnd life more soft and hushed for him....Over her shoulder now she smiledTrustfully to him, like a child,The while her fingers gayly movedAlonge these white keys dearly loved,Making them laugh a jocund measure,Making them show and sing her pleasure....A smile that dwelt upon his eyes,To see what mood might therein rise,--What point of soft light seen afarWhich might dilate to moon or star....A smile that for a second spaceBrooded wistfully on her face,Opening soft her spirit's door,Disclosing depths undreamed before:Passionate depths of half-seen flame,Young loveliness despising shame,Desire that trembled to meet desire,And fire that yearned to fuse with fire....And lightly then she turned away,Ironic music rippled gay,--Subtle sarcastic flippanciesDisguising speechless ecstasies..."Play something else..." He rose to turnThe pages, while the deep nocturneStruck slow rich chords of plangent pain,Beautiful, into heart and brain;A tortured, anguished, suffering thingThat seemed at once to cry and sing;Despairing love that strove to findThe face beloved with fingers blind.He saw her body's slender grace,This drooping shoulder, shadowed face;All of her body, hidden soIn saffron satin's flush and flow,--Its white and simple loveliness,--Came on his heart like giddiness,Seductive as this music came;Until her body seemed like flame,--Intense white flame, so swiftly movingThat it gave scarcely time for loving;But rapid as the sun she seemed,A blinding light that flowed and streamedAnd sang and shone through roaring space....The sun itself! for now her face,Wherein this music's whole soul dwelt,Drew him like helpless star, he feltA fierce compulsion, reckless, mad,A sweet compulsion, troubled, glad,His trembling hands went out to her,Her cool flesh made his senses blur;While, head thrown backward, sinking dim,She opened wide her soul to him....Past his life went whirls of lights,Chaos of music, days and nights,Her wild eyes yearned to lure him inAnd close him up in dark of sin,To lure him in and drink him downAnd all his soul in love to drown....Her nakedness he seemed to see.And breast to breast, and knee to knee,Tremulous, breathless, swaying, burning,Body to beautiful body yearning,In joy and terror, flesh to flesh,They flamed in passion's fine red mesh,--Living in one short breath againThe cosmic tide's whole bliss and pain,Darkness and ether, nebulous fire,Vast suns whirled forth by vast desire,Huge moons flung out with monstrous mirthAnd stars in glorious hells of birth,All jubilating, blazing, reeling,An orgiastic splendor wheeling,Moon torn from earth and star from sunIn screaming pain, titanic fun,And stars whirled back to sun againTo be consumed in flaming pain!...In them at last all life was met:They were God's self! This earth had set.Mad fires of life sang through their veins,Ruinous blisses, joyous pains,Life the destroyer, life the breaker,And death, the everlasting maker....Have I ever told youthat if I sit really still and silent,sometimes. I like to thinkI can hear your heart beatingin time with mine?that when I watch you speak to methrough lines and cords,and bytes and ram,I imagineyour voice,whispering into my ear?that I wait out each dayin anticipation,wantingonly an hour or two,just a second in space and time,to feel close to you?that there has been times,when I ached for you,ached for you so badly,that the emotions overwhelmed me..and so I sat and cried?that sometimes,I will reach out,touching your nameon this cold screen before me,wishingI could reach inand pull you to me?that after the first time I heardthe sound of your voice,thousands of miles away,I sat up all night,turning the conversation over and overin my mind,examining it,like some newly discovered species of flower?that I would give everything up,just for one nightto be able to lay near you,to feel your chest rise and fallwith each breath you take,just to know that you are real?that I dream of you often,I dream of you reaching outand touching my hand,simply to let me knowthat you are there,and everything is okay?Have I ever told you,have I still yet to tell you . . .that I love you?  The morning breaks like a pomegranate    In a shining crack of red,Ah, when to-morrow the dawn comes late    Whitening across the bed,It will find me watching at the marriage gate    And waiting while light is shedOn him who is sleeping satiate,    With a sunk, abandoned head.And when the dawn comes creeping in,    Cautiously I shall raiseMyself to watch the morning win    My first of days,As it shows him sleeping a sleep he got    Of me, as under my gaze,He grows distinct, and I see his hot    Face freed of the wavering blaze.Then I shall know which image of God    My man is made toward,And I shall know my bitter rod    Or my rich reward.And I shall know the stamp and worth    Of the coin I've accepted as mine,Shall see an image of heaven or of earth    On his minted metal shine.Yea and I long to see him sleep    In my power utterly,I long to know what I have to keep,    I long to seeMy love, that spinning coin, laid still    And plain at the side of me,For me to count--for I know he will    Greatly enrichen me.And then he will be mine, he will lieOpening his value plain to my eye    He will sleep of me.He will lie negligent, resign    His all to me, and IShall watch the dawn light up for me    This sleeping wealth of mine.And I shall watch the wan light shine    On his sleep that is filled of me,On his brow where the wisps of fond hair twine    So truthfully,On his lips where the light breaths come and go    Naïve and winsomely,On his limbs that I shall weep to know    Lie under my mastery.   I saw the midlands  Revolve through her hair;The fields of autumn  Stretching bare,And sheep on the pasture  Tossed back in a scare.And still as ever  The world went round,My mouth on her pulsing  Neck was found,And my breast to her beating  Breast was bound.But my heart at the centre  Of all, in a swoundWas still as a pivot,  As all the groundOn its prowling orbit  Shifted round.And still in my nostrils  The scent of her flesh,And still my wet mouth  Sought her afresh;And still one pulse  Through the world did thresh.And the world all whirling  Around in joyLike the dance of a dervish  Did destroyMy sense--and my reason  Spun like a toy.But firm at the centre  My heart was found;Her own to my perfect  Heart-beat bound,Like a magnet's keeper  Closing the round.  What large, dark hands are those at the windowLifted, grasping the golden lightWhich weaves its way through the creeper leaves          To my heart's delight?Ah, only the leaves! But in the west,In the west I see a redness comeOver the evening's burning breast--          --'Tis the wound of love goes home!  The woodbine creeps abroad  Calling low to her lover:    The sun-lit flirt who all the day    Has poised above her lips in play    And stolen kisses, shallow and gay    Of pollen, now has gone away    --She woos the moth with her sweet, low word,  And when above her his broad wings hover  Then her bright breast she will uncover  And yield her honey-drop to her lover.  Into the yellow, evening glow  Saunters a man from the farm below,  Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed  Where hangs the swallow's marriage bed.    The bird lies warm against the wall.    She glances quick her startled eyes    Towards him, then she turns away    Her small head, making warm display    Of red upon the throat. His terrors sway    Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,    Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies    In one blue stoop from out the sties    Into the evening's empty hall.Oh, water-hen, beside the rushesHide your quaint, unfading blushes,Still your quick tail, and lie as dead,Till the distance folds over his ominous tread.The rabbit presses back her ears,Turns back her liquid, anguished eyesAnd crouches low: then with wild springSpurts from the terror of _his_ oncomingTo be choked back, the wire ringHer frantic effort throttling:    Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!Ah soon in his large, hard hands she dies,And swings all loose to the swing of his walk.Yet calm and kindly are his eyesAnd ready to open in brown surpriseShould I not answer to his talkOr should he my tears surmise.I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chairWatching the door open: he flashes bareHis strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyesIn a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wiseHe flings the rabbit soft on the table boardAnd comes towards me: ah, the uplifted swordOf his hand against my bosom, and oh, the broadBlade of his hand that raise my face to applaudHis coming: he raises up my face to himAnd caresses my mouth with his fingers, which still smell grimOf the rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare!I know not what fine wire is round my throat,I only know I let him finger thereMy pulse of life, letting him nose like a stoatWho sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood:And down his mouth comes to my mouth, and downHis dark bright eyes descend like a fiery hoodUpon my mind: his mouth meets mine, and a floodOf sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drownWithin him, die, and find death good. Under the long, dark boughs, like jewels red      In the hair of an Eastern girlShine strings of crimson cherries, as if had bled      Blood-drops beneath each curl.Under the glistening cherries, with folded wings      Three dead birds lie:Pale-breasted throstles and a blackbird, robberlings      Stained with red dye.Under the haystack a girl stands laughing at me,      With cherries hung round her ears--Offering me her scarlet fruit: I will see      If she has any tears.   IAh, you stack of white lilies, all white and gold,I am adrift as a sunbeam, and without formOr having, save I light on you to warmYour pallor into radiance, flush your coldWhite beauty into incandescence: youAre not a stack of white lilies to-night, but a whiteAnd clustered star transfigured by me to-night,And lighting these ruddy leaves like a star dropped throughThe slender bare arms of the branches, your tire-maidensWho lift swart arms to fend me off; but I comeLike a wind of fire upon you, like to someStray whitebeam who on you his fire unladens.And you are a glistening toadstool shining hereAmong the crumpled beech-leaves phosphorescent,My stack of white lilies burning incandescentOf me, a soft white star among the leaves, my dear.Is it with pain, my dear, that you shudder so?Is it because I have hurt you with pain, my dear?    Did I shiver?--Nay, truly I did not know--    A dewdrop may-be splashed on my face down here.Why even now you speak through close-shut teeth.I have been too much for you--Ah, I remember!    The ground is a little chilly underneath    The leaves--and, dear, you consume me all to an ember.You hold yourself all hard as if my kissesHurt as I gave them--you put me away--    Ah never I put you away: yet each kiss hisses    Hot as a drop of fire wastes me away.I am ashamed, you wanted me not to-night--Nay, it is always so, you sigh with me.Your radiance dims when I draw too near, and my freeFire enters your petals like death, you wilt dead white.Ah, I do know, and I am deep ashamed;You love me while I hover tenderlyLike clinging sunbeams kissing you: but seeWhen I close in fire upon you, and you are flamedWith the swiftest fire of my love, you are destroyed.'Tis a degradation deep to me, that my bestSoul's whitest lightning which should bright attestGod stepping down to earth in one white stride,Means only to you a clogged, numb burden of fleshHeavy to bear, even heavy to uprearAgain from earth, like lilies wilted and sereFlagged on the floor, that before stood up so fresh.  And you remember, in the afternoonThe sea and the sky went grey, as if there had sunkA flocculent dust on the floor of the world: the festoonOf the sky sagged dusty as spider cloth,And coldness clogged the sea, till it ceased to croon.A dank, sickening scent came up from the grimeOf weed that blackened the shore, so that I recoiledFeeling the raw cold dun me: and all the timeYou leapt about on the slippery rocks, and threwThe words that rang with a brassy, shallow chime.And all day long that raw and ancient coldDeadened me through, till the grey downs darkened to sleep.Then I longed for you with your mantle of love to foldMe over, and drive from out of my body the deepCold that had sunk to my soul, and there kept hold.But still to me all evening long you were cold,And I was numb with a bitter, deathly ache;Till old days drew me back into their fold,And dim sheep crowded me warm with companionship,And old ghosts clustered me close, and sleep was cajoled.I slept till dawn at the window blew in like dust,Like the linty, raw-cold dust disturbed from the floorOf a disused room: a grey pale light like mustThat settled upon my face and hands till it seemedTo flourish there, as pale mould blooms on a crust.Then I rose in fear, needing you fearfully,For I thought you were warm as a sudden jet of blood.I thought I could plunge in your spurting hotness, and beClean of the cold and the must.--With my hand on the latchI heard you in your sleep speak strangely to me.And I dared not enter, feeling suddenly dismayed.So I went and washed my deadened flesh in the seaAnd came back tingling clean, but worn and frayedWith cold, like the shell of the moon: and strange it seemsThat my love has dawned in rose again, like the love of a maid.   -When shall I see the half moon sink againBehind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?When will the scent of the dim, white phloxCreep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,    (Will it never finish the twelve?)Falls again and again on my heart with a heavy reproach?The moon-mist is over the village, out of the mist speaks the bell,And all the little roofs of the village bow low, pitiful, beseeching,resigned:    Oh, little home, what is it I have not done well?Ah home, suddenly I love you,As I hear the sharp clean trot of a pony down the road,Succeeding sharp little sounds dropping into the silence,Clear upon the long-drawn hoarseness of a train across the valley.The light has gone out from under my mother's door.        That she should love me so,        She, so lonely, greying now,        And I leaving her,        Bent on my pursuits!    Love is the great Asker,    The sun and the rain do not ask the secret    Of the time when the grain struggles down in the dark.    The moon walks her lonely way without anguish,    Because no loved one grieves over her departure.Forever, ever by my shoulder pitiful Love will linger,Crouching as little houses crouch under the mist when I turn.Forever, out of the mist the church lifts up her reproachful finger,Pointing my eyes in wretched defiance where love hides her face tomourn.    Oh but the rain creeps down to wet the grain        That struggles alone in the dark,    And asking nothing, cheerfully steals back again!        The moon sets forth o' nights        To walk the lonely, dusky heights        Serenely, with steps unswerving;        Pursued by no sigh of bereavement,        No tears of love unnerving        Her constant tread:    While ever at my side,        Frail and sad, with grey bowed head,        The beggar-woman, the yearning-eyed        Inexorable love goes lagging.The wild young heifer, glancing distraught,With a strange new knocking of life at her side    Runs seeking a loneliness.The little grain draws down the earth to hide.Nay, even the slumberous egg, as it labours under the shell,    Patiently to divide, and self-divide,Asks to be hidden, and wishes nothing to tell.But when I draw the scanty cloak of silence over my eyes,Piteous Love comes peering under the hood.Touches the clasp with trembling fingers, and triesTo put her ear to the painful sob of my blood,While her tears soak through to my breast,      Where they burn and cauterise.  The moon lies back and reddens.  In the valley, a corncrake calls        Monotonously,  With a piteous, unalterable plaint, that deadens        My confident activity:  With a hoarse, insistent request that falls        Unweariedly, unweariedly,        Asking something more of me,            Yet more of me!    Do you rememberHow night after night swept level and lowOverhead, at home, and had not one star,Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go    Forth to her field of November.    And you remember,How towards the north a red blot on the skyBurns like a blotch of anxietyOver the forges, and small flames ply    Like ghosts the shadow of the ember.    Those were the daysWhen it was awful autumn to me,When only there glowed on the dark of the skyThe red reflection of her agony,    My beloved smelting down in the blaze    Of death--my dearestLove who had borne, and was now leaving me.And I at the foot of her cross did suffer    My own gethsemane.    So I came to you,And twice, after great kisses, I sawThe rim of the moon divinely riseAnd strive to detach herself from the raw    Blackened edge of the skies.    Strive to escape;With her whiteness revealing my sunken worldTall and loftily shadowed. But the moonNever magnolia-like unfurled    Her white, her lamp-like shape.    For you told me no,And bade me not to ask for the dourCommunion, offering--"a better thing."So I lay on your breast for an obscure hour    Feeling your fingers go    Like a rhythmic breezeOver my hair, and tracing my brows,Till I knew you not from a little wind:--I wonder now if God allows    Us only one moment his keys.    If only thenYou could have unlocked the moon on the night,And I baptized myself in the lightOf your love; we both have entered then the white    Pure passion, and never again.    I wonder if onlyYou had taken me then, how differentLife would have been: should I have spentMyself in waste, and you have bent    Your pride, through being lonely? The little river twittering in the twilight,The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,    This is almost bliss.And everything shut up and gone to sleep,All the troubles and anxieties and pain    Gone under the twilight.Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the river    That will last for ever.And at last I know my love for you is here,I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,It is large, so large, I could not see it beforeBecause of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,    Troubles, anxieties and pains.    You are the call and I am the answer,    You are the wish, and I the fulfilment,    You are the night, and I the day.        What else--it is perfect enough,        It is perfectly complete,        You and I,        What more----?Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!I felt the lurch and halt of her heart    Next my breast, where my own heart was beating;And I laughed to feel it plunge and bound,And strange in my blood-swept ears was the sound    Of the words I kept repeating,Repeating with tightened arms, and the hot blood's blindfold art.Her breath flew warm against my neck,    Warm as a flame in the close night air;And the sense of her clinging flesh was sweetWhere her arms and my neck's blood-surge could meet.    Holding her thus, did I careThat the black night hid her from me, blotted out every speck?I leaned me forward to find her lips,    And claim her utterly in a kiss,When the lightning flew across her face,And I saw her for the flaring space    Of a second, afraid of the clipsOf my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear of my kiss.A moment, like a wavering spark,    Her face lay there before my breast,Pale love lost in a snow of fear,And guarded by a glittering tear,    And lips apart with dumb cries;A moment, and she was taken again in the merciful dark.I heard the thunder, and felt the rain,    And my arms fell loose, and I was dumb.Almost I hated her, she was so good,Hated myself, and the place, and my blood,    Which burned with rage, as I bade her comeHome, away home, ere the lightning floated forth again.-  When the autumn roses  Are heavy with dew,Before the mist discloses  The leaf's brown hue,You would, among the laughing hills  Of yesterdayWalk innocent in the daffodils,Coiffing up your auburn hairIn a puritan fillet, a chaste white snareTo catch and keep me with you there  So far away.When from the autumn roses  Trickles the dew,When the blue mist uncloses  And the sun looks through,You from those startled hills  Come away,Out of the withering daffodils;Thoughtful, and half afraid,Plaiting a heavy, auburn braidAnd coiling it round the wise brows of a maid  Who was scared in her play.When in the autumn roses  Creeps a bee,And a trembling flower encloses  His ecstasy,You from your lonely walk  Turn away,And leaning to me like a flower on its stalk,Wait among the beechesFor your late bee who beseechesTo creep through your loosened hair till he reaches,  Your heart of dismay.Slowly the moon is rising out of the ruddy haze,Divesting herself of her golden shift, and soEmerging white and exquisite; and I in amazeSee in the sky before me, a woman I did not knowI loved, but there she goes and her beauty hurts my heart;I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.A   High and smaller goes the moon, she is small and very far from me,Wistful and candid, watching me wistfully, and I seeTrembling blue in her pallor a tear that surely I have seen before,A tear which I had hoped that even hell held not again in store.A  A tiny moon as white and small as a single jasmine flowerLeans all alone above my window, on night's wintry bower,Liquid as lime-tree blossom, soft as brilliant water or rainShe shines, the one white love of my youth, which all sin cannot stain. -The train in running across the weald has fallen into a steadier strokeSo even, it beats like silence, and sky and earth in one unbrokeEmbrace of darkness lie around, and crushed between them all the looseAnd littered lettering of leaves and hills and houses closed, and wecan useThe open book of landscape no more, for the covers of darkness haveshut uponIts written pages, and sky and earth and all between are closed in one.And we are smothered between the darkness, we close our eyes and say"Hush!" we tryTo escape in sleep the terror of this immense deep darkness, and we lieWrapped up for sleep. And then, dear God, from out of the twofolddarkness, redAs if from the womb the moon arises, as if the twin-walled darknesshad bledIn one great spasm of birth and given us this new, red moon-riseWhich lies on the knees of the darkness bloody, and makes us hide oureyes.The train beats frantic in haste, and struggles awayFrom this ruddy terror of birth that has slid downFrom out of the loins of night to flame our wayWith fear; but God, I am glad, so glad that I drownMy terror with joy of confirmation, for nowLies God all red before me, and I am glad,As the Magi were when they saw the rosy browOf the Infant bless their constant folly which hadBrought them thither to God: for now I knowThat the Womb is a great red passion whence rises allThe shapeliness that decks us here-below:Yea like the fire that boils within this ballOf earth, and quickens all herself with flowers,God burns within the stiffened clay of us;And every flash of thought that we and oursSend up to heaven, and every movement, doesFly like a spark from this God-fire of passion;And pain of birth, and joy of the begetting,And sweat of labour, and the meanest fashionOf fretting or of gladness, but the jettingOf a trail of the great fire against the skyWhere we can see it, a jet from the innermost fire:And even in the watery shells that lieAlive within the cozy under-mire,A grain of this same fire I can descry.And then within the screaming birds that flyAcross the lightning when the storm leaps higher;And then the swirling, flaming folk that tryTo come like fire-flames at their fierce desire,They are as earth's dread, spurting flames that plyAwhile and gush forth death and then expire.And though it be love's wet blue eyes that cryTo hot love to relinquish its desire,Still in their depths I see the same red sparkAs rose to-night upon us from the dark.Now I am come again, you who have so desiredMy coming, why do you look away from me?Why does your cheek burn against me--have I inspiredSuch anger as sets your mouth unwontedly?Ah, here I sit while you break the music beneathYour bow; for broken it is, and hurting to hear:Cease then from music--does anguish of absence bequeathMe only aloofness when I would draw near? You, Helen, who see the starsAs mistletoe berries burning in a black tree,You surely, seeing I am a bowl of kisses,Should put your mouth to mine and drink of me.Helen, you let my kisses steamWasteful into the night's black nostrils; drinkMe up I pray; oh you who are Night's Bacchante,How can you from my bowl of kisses shrink!The last, silk-floating thought has gone from the dandelion stem,And the flesh of the stalk holds up for nothing a blank diadem.The night's flood-winds have lifted my last desire from me,And my hollow flesh stands up in the night abandonedly.As I stand on this hill, with the whitening cave of the city beyond,Helen, I am despoiled of my pride, and my soul turns fond:Overhead the nightly heavens like an open, immense eye,Like a cat's distended pupil sparkles with sudden stars,As with thoughts that flash and crackle in uncouth malignancyThey glitter at me, and I fear the fierce snapping of night'sthought-stars.Beyond me, up the darkness, goes the gush of the lights of two towns,As the breath which rushes upwards from the nostrils of an immenseLife crouched across the globe, ready, if need be, to pounceAcross the space upon heaven's high hostile eminence.All round me, but far away, the night's twin consciousness roarsWith sounds that endlessly swell and sink like the storm of thoughtin the brain,Lifting and falling like slow breaths taken, pulsing like oarsImmense that beat the blood of the night down its vein.The night is immense and awful, Helen, and I am insect smallIn the fur of this hill, clung on to the fur of shaggy, black heather.A palpitant speck in the fur of the night, and afraid of all,Seeing the world and the sky like creatures hostile together.And I in the fur of the world, and you a pale fleck from the sky,How we hate each other to-night, hate, you and I,As the world of activity hates the dream that goes on on high,As a man hates the dreaming woman he loves, but who will not reply.-      Is that the moonAt the window so big and red?No one in the room,No one near the bed----?      Listen, her shoonPalpitating down the stair?--Or a beat of wings at the window there?      A moment agoShe kissed me warm on the mouth,The very moon in the southIs warm with a bloody glow,The moon from far abyssesSignalling those two kisses.      And now the moonGoes slowly out of the west,And slowly back in my breastMy kisses are sinking, soon      To leave me at rest.The trees rise tall and taller, liftedOn a subtle rush of cool grey flameThat issuing out of the dawn has sifted    The spirit from each leaf's frame.For the trailing, leisurely rapture of lifeDrifts dimly forward, easily hiddenBy bright leaves uttered aloud, and strife    Of shapes in the grey mist chidden.The grey, phosphorescent, pellucid advanceOf the luminous purpose of God, shines outWhere the lofty trees athwart stream chance    To shake flakes of its shadow about.The subtle, steady rush of the wholeGrey foam-mist of advancing God,As He silently sweeps to His somewhere, his goal,    Is heard in the grass of the sod.Is heard in the windless whisper of leavesIn the silent labours of men in the fields,In the downward dropping of flimsy sheaves    Of cloud the rain skies yield.In the tapping haste of a fallen leaf,In the flapping of red-roof smoke, and the smallFoot-stepping tap of men beneath    These trees so huge and tall.For what can all sharp-rimmed substance but catchIn a backward ripple, God's purpose, revealFor a moment His mighty direction, snatch    A spark beneath His wheel.Since God sweeps onward dim and vast,Creating the channelled vein of ManAnd Leaf for His passage, His shadow is cast    On all for us to scan.Ah listen, for Silence is not lonely:Imitate the magnificent treesThat speak no word of their rapture, but only    Breathe largely the luminous breeze. A gang of labourers on the piled wet timberThat shines blood-red beside the railway sidingSeem to be making out of the blue of the morningSomething faery and fine, the shuttles sliding,The red-gold spools of their hands and faces shuttlingHither and thither across the morn's crystalline frameOf blue: trolls at the cave of ringing cerulean mining,And laughing with work, living their work like a game.=The Town=Oh you stiff shapes, swift transformation seethesAbout you: only last night you wereA Sodom smouldering in the dense, soiled air;To-day a thicket of sunshine with blue smoke-wreaths.To-morrow swimming in evening's vague, dim vapourLike a weeded city in shadow under the sea,Beneath an ocean of shimmering light you will be:Then a group of toadstools waiting the moon's white taper.And when I awake in the morning, after rain,To find the new houses a cluster of lilies glitteringIn scarlet, alive with the birds' bright twittering,I'll say your bond of ugliness is vain.=The Earth=Oh Earth, you spinning clod of earth,And then you lamp, you lemon-coloured beauty;Oh Earth, you rotten apple rolling downward,Then brilliant Earth, from the burr of night in beautyAs a jewel-brown horse-chestnut newly issued:--You are all these, and strange, it is my dutyTo take you all, sordid or radiant tissued.=Men=Oh labourers, oh shuttles across the blue frame of morning,You feet of the rainbow balancing the sky!Oh you who flash your arms like rockets to heaven,Who in lassitude lean as yachts on the sea-wind lie!You who in crowds are rhododendrons in blossom,Who stand alone in pride like lighted lamps;Who grappling down with work or hate or passion,Take strange lithe form of a beast that sweats and ramps:You who are twisted in grief like crumpled beech-leaves,Who curl in sleep like kittens, who kiss as a swarmOf clustered, vibrating bees; who fall to earthAt last like a bean-pod: what are you, oh multiform?We have bit no forbidden apple,    Eve and I,Yet the splashes of day and nightFalling round us no longer dappleThe same Eden with purple and white.This is our own still valley    Our Eden, our home,But day shows it vivid with feelingAnd the pallor of night does not tallyWith dark sleep that once covered its ceiling.My little red heifer, to-night I looked in her eyes,    --She will calve to-morrow:Last night when I went with the lantern, the sow was grabbing herlitterWith red, snarling jaws: and I heard the criesOf the new-born, and after that, the old owl, then the bats thatflitter.And I woke to the sound of the wood-pigeons, and lay and listened,    Till I could borrowA few quick beats of a wood-pigeon's heart, and when I did riseThe morning sun on the shaken iris glistened,And I saw that home, this valley, was wider than Paradise.I learned it all from my Eve    This warm, dumb wisdom.She's a finer instructress than years;She has taught my heart-strings to weaveThrough the web of all laughter and tears.And now I see the valley    Fleshed all like meWith feelings that change and quiver:And all things seem to tally    With something in me,Something of which she's the giver.-If she would come to me here,    Now the sunken swaths    Are glittering pathsTo the sun, and the swallows cut clearInto the low sun--if she came to me here!If she would come to me now,Before the last mown harebells are dead,While that vetch clump yet burns red;Before all the bats have dropped from the boughInto the cool of night--if she came to me now!The horses are untackled, the chattering machineIs still at last. If she would come,I would gather up the warm hay fromThe hill-brow, and lie in her lap till the greenSky ceased to quiver, and lost its tired sheen.I should like to dropOn the hay, with my head on her kneeAnd lie stone still, while sheBreathed quiet above me--we could stopTill the stars came out to see.I should like to lie stillAs if I was dead--but feelingHer hand go stealingOver my face and my hair untilThis ache was shed.-God shook thy roundness in His finger's cup,He sunk His hands in firmness down thy sides,And drew the circle of His grasp, O Man,Along thy limbs delighted, thine, His bride's.And so thou wert God-shapen: His fingerCurved thy mouth for thee, and His strong shoulderPlanted thee upright: art not proud to seeIn the curve of thine exquisite form the joy of the Moulder?He took a handful of light and rolled a ball,Compressed it till its beam grew wondrous dark,Then gave thee thy dark eyes, O Man, that allHe made had doorway to thee through that spark.God, lonely, put down His mouth in a kiss of creation,He kissed thee, O Man, in a passion of love, and leftThe vivid life of His love in thy mouth and thy nostrils;Keep then the kiss from the adultress' theft.Sister, tha knows while we was on the planks  Aside o' th' grave, while th' coffin wor lyin' yetOn th' yaller clay, an' th' white flowers top of it  Tryin' to keep off 'n him a bit o' th' wet,An' parson makin' haste, an' a' the black  Huddlin' close together a cause o' th' rain,Did t' 'appen ter notice a bit of a lass away back  By a head-stun, sobbin' an' sobbin' again?    --How should I be lookin' round      An' me standin' on the plank    Beside the open ground,      Where our Ted 'ud soon be sank?    Yi, an' 'im that young,      Snapped sudden out of all    His wickedness, among      Pals worse n'r ony name as you could call.Let be that; there's some o' th' bad as we  Like better nor all your good, an' 'e was one.--An' cos I liked him best, yi, bett'r nor thee,  I canna bide to think where he is gone.Ah know tha liked 'im bett'r nor me. But let  Me tell thee about this lass. When you had goneAh stopped behind on t' pad i' th' drippin wet  An' watched what 'er 'ad on.Tha should ha' seed her slive up when we'd gone,  Tha should ha' seed her kneel an' look inAt th' sloppy wet grave--an' 'er little neck shone  That white, an' 'er shook that much, I'd like to beginScraïghtin' my-sen as well. 'En undid her black  Jacket at th' bosom, an' took from out of itOver a double 'andful of violets, all in a pack  Ravelled blue and white--warm, for a bitO' th' smell come waftin' to me. 'Er put 'er face  Right intil 'em and scraïghted out again,Then after a bit 'er dropped 'em down that place,  An' I come away, because o' the teemin' rain.  Dunna thee tell me its his'n, mother,      Dunna thee, dunna thee.--Oh ay! he'll be comin' to tell thee his-sèn      Wench, wunna he?Tha doesna mean to say to me, mother,      He's gone wi that----My gel, owt'll do for a man i' the dark,      Tha's got it flat.But 'er's old, mother, 'er's twenty year      Older nor him----Ay, an' yaller as a crowflower, an' yet i' the dark      Er'd do for Tim.Tha niver believes it, mother, does ter?      It's somebody's lies.--Ax him thy-sèn wench--a widder's lodger;      It's no surprise.A widow of forty-fiveWith a bitter, swarthy skin,To ha' 'ticed a lad o' twenty-fiveAn' 'im to have been took in!As has sludged like a horse all her life,Till 'er's tough as whit-leather, to sliveAtween a lad an' 'is wife!A widow of forty-five.A tough old otchel wi' longWitch teeth, an' 'er black hawk-eyes as I'veMistrusted all along!An' me as 'as kep my-senShut like a daisy bud,Clean an' new an' nice, so's whenHe wed he'd ha'e summat good!An' 'im as nice an' freshAs any man i' the force,To ha'e gone an' given his white young fleshTo a woman that coarse!You're stout to brave this snow, Miss Stainwright,    Are you makin' Brinsley way?--I'm off up th' line to Underwood    Wi' a dress as is wanted to-day.Oh are you goin' to Underwood?    'Appen then you've 'eered?--What's that as 'appen I've 'eered-on, Missis,    Speak up, you nedna be feared.Why, your young man an' Widow Naylor,    Her as he lodges wi',They say he's got her wi' childt; but there,    It's nothing to do wi' me.Though if it's true they'll turn him out    O' th' p'lice force, without fail;An' if it's not true, I'd back my life    They'll listen to _her_ tale.Well, I'm believin' no tale, Missis,    I'm seein' for my-sen;An' when I know for sure, Missis,    I'll talk _then_.Nay robin red-breast, tha nedna    Sit noddin' thy head at me;My breast's as red as thine, I reckon,    Flayed red, if tha could but see.Nay, you blessed pee-whips,    You nedna screet at me!I'm screetin' my-sen, but are-na goin'    To let iv'rybody see.Tha _art_ smock-ravelled, bunny,    Larropin' neck an' cropI' th' snow: but I's warrant thee, bunny,    _I'm_ further ower th' top.VNow sithee theer at th' railroad crossin'Warmin' his-sen at the stool o' fireUnder the tank as fills the ingines,If there isn't my dearly-beloved liar!My constable wi' 'is buttoned breastAs stout as the truth, my sirs!--An' 'is faceAs bold as a robin! It's much he caresFor this nice old shame and disgrace.Oh but he drops his flag when 'e sees me,Yes, an' 'is face goes white ... oh yesTha can stare at me wi' thy fierce blue eyes,But tha doesna stare me out, I guess!Whativer brings thee out so far    In a' this depth o' snow?--I'm takin' 'ome a weddin' dress    If tha maun know.Why, is there a weddin' at Underwood,    As tha ne'd trudge up here?--It's Widow Naylor's weddin'-dress,    An' 'er's wantin it, I hear._'Er_ doesna want no weddin-dress ...    What--but what dost mean?--Doesn't ter know what I mean, Tim?--Yi,    Tha must' a' been hard to wean!Tha'rt a good-un at suckin-in yet, Timmy;    But tell me, isn't it trueAs 'er'll be wantin' _my_ weddin' dress    In a week or two?Tha's no occasions ter ha'e me on    Lizzie--what's done is done!--_Done_, I should think so--Done! But might    I ask when tha begun?It's thee as 'as done it as much as me,    Lizzie, I tell thee that.--"Me gotten a childt to thy landlady--!"    Tha's gotten thy answer pat,As tha allers hast--but let me tell thee    Hasna ter sent me whoam, when IWas a'most burstin' mad o' my-sen    An' walkin' in agony;After thy kisses, Lizzie, after    Tha's lain right up to me Lizzie, an' meltedInto me, melted into me, Lizzie,    Till I was verily swelted.An' if my landlady seed me like it,    An' if 'er clawkin', tiger's eyesWent through me just as the light went out    Is it any cause for surprise?No cause for surprise at all, my lad,    After lickin' and snuffin' at me, tha couldTurn thy mouth on a woman like her--    Did ter find her good?Ay, I did, but afterwards    I should like to ha' killed her!--Afterwards!--an' after how long    Wor it tha'd liked to 'a killed her?Say no more, Liz, dunna thee,    I might lose my-sen.--I'll only say good-bye to thee, Timothy,    An' gi'e her thee back again.I'll ta'e thy word 'Good-bye,' Liz,    But I shonna marry her,I shonna for nobody.--It is    Very nice on you, Sir.The childt maun ta'e its luck, it maun,    An' she maun ta'e _her_ luck,For I tell ye I shonna marry her--    What her's got, her took.That's spoken like a man, Timmy,    That's spoken like a man ..."He up an' fired off his pistol    An' then away he ran."I damn well shanna marry 'er,    So chew at it no more,Or I'll chuck the flamin' lot of you--    --You nedn't have swore.That's his collar round the candle-stickAn' that's the dark blue tie I bought 'im,An' these is the woman's kids he's so fond on,An' 'ere comes the cat that caught 'im.I dunno where his eyes was--a gretRound-shouldered hag! My sirs, to thinkOf him stoopin' to her! You'd wonder he couldThrow hisself in that sink.I expect you know who I am, Mrs Naylor!    --Who yer are?--yis, you're Lizzie Stainwright.'An 'appen you might guess what I've come for?    --'Appen I mightn't, 'appen I might.You knowed as I was courtin' Tim Merfin.    --Yis, I knowed 'e wor courtin' thee.An' yet you've been carryin' on wi' him.    --Ay, an' 'im wi' me.Well, now you've got to pay for it,    --An' if I han, what's that to thee?For 'e isn't goin' to marry you.    --Is it a toss-up 'twixt thee an' me?It's no toss-up 'twixt thee an' me.    --Then what art colleyfoglin' for?I'm not havin' your orts an' slarts.    --Which on us said you wor?I want you to know 'e's non _marryin'_ you.    --Tha wants 'im thy-sen too bad.Though I'll see as 'e pays you, an' comes to the scratch.    --Tha'rt for doin' a lot wi' th' lad.To think I should ha'e to haffle an' caffle    Wi' a woman, an' pay 'er a priceFor lettin' me marry the lad as I thought    To marry wi' cabs an' rice.But we'll go unbeknown to the registrar,    An' give _'er_ what money there is,For I won't be beholden to such as her    For anythink of his.Take off thy duty stripes, Tim,    An' come wi' me in here,Ta'e off thy p'lice-man's helmet    An' look me clear.I wish tha hadna done it, Tim,    I do, an' that I do!For whenever I look thee i' th' face, I s'll see    Her face too.I wish tha could wesh 'er off'n thee,    For I used to think that thyFace was the finest thing that iver    Met my eye....XTwenty pound o' thy own tha hast, and fifty pound ha'e I,Thine shall go to pay the woman, an' wi' my bit we'll buyAll as we shall want for furniture when tha leaves this place,An' we'll be married at th' registrar--now lift thy face.Lift thy face an' look at me, man, up an' look at me:Sorry I am for this business, an' sorry if I ha'e driven theeTo such a thing: but it's a poor tale, that I'm bound to say,Before I can ta'e thee I've got a widow of forty-five to pay.Dunnat thee think but what I love thee--I love thee well,But 'deed an' I wish as this tale o' thine wor niver my tale to tell;Deed an' I wish as I could stood at the altar wi' thee an' been proudo' thee,That I could ha' been first woman to thee, as thou'rt first man to me.But we maun ma'e the best on't--I'll rear thy childt if 'er'll yieldit to me,An' then wi' that twenty pound we gi'e 'er I s'd think 'er wunna beSo very much worser off than 'er wor before--An' now look upAn' answer me--for I've said my say, an' there's no more sorrow to sup.Yi, tha'rt a man, tha'rt a fine big man, but niver a baby had eyesAs sulky an' ormin' as thine. Hast owt to say otherwiseFrom what I've arranged wi' thee? Eh man, what a stubborn jackass thouart,Kiss me then--there!--ne'er mind if I scraight--I wor fond o' thee,Sweetheart.A 'S Somebody's knocking at the door    Mother, come down and see.--I's think it's nobbut a beggar,    Say, I'm busy.Its not a beggar, mother,--hark    How hard he knocks ...--Eh, tha'rt a mard-'arsed kid,    'E'll gi'e thee socks!Shout an' ax what 'e wants,    I canna come down.--'E says "Is it Arthur Holliday's?"    Say "Yes," tha clown.'E says, "Tell your mother as 'er mester's    Got hurt i' th' pit."What--oh my sirs, 'e never says that,    That's niver it.Come out o' the way an' let me see,    Eh, there's no peace!An' stop thy scraightin', childt,    Do shut thy face."Your mester's 'ad an accident,    An' they're ta'ein 'im i' th' ambulanceTo Nottingham,"--Eh dear o' me    If 'e's not a man for mischance!Wheers he hurt this time, lad?    --I dunna know,They on'y towd me it wor bad--    It would be so!Eh, what a man!--an' that cobbly road,    They'll jolt him a'most to death,I'm sure he's in for some trouble    Nigh every time he takes breath.Out o' my way, childt--dear o' me, wheer    Have I put his clean stockings and shirt;Goodness knows if they'll be able    To take off his pit dirt.An' what a moan he'll make--there niver    Was such a man for a fussIf anything ailed him--at any rate    _I_ shan't have him to nuss.I do hope it's not very bad!    Eh, what a shame it seemsAs some should ha'e hardly a smite o' trouble    An' others has reams.It's a shame as 'e should be knocked about    Like this, I'm sure it is!He's had twenty accidents, if he's had one;    Owt bad, an' it's his.There's one thing, we'll have peace for a bit,    Thank Heaven for a peaceful house;An' there's compensation, sin' it's accident,    An' club money--I nedn't grouse.An' a fork an' a spoon he'll want, an' what else;    I s'll never catch that train--What a trapse it is if a man gets hurt--    I s'd think he'll get right again.  The snow is witherin' off'n th' gress    Love, should I tell thee summat?An' a thick mist sucks at the clots o' snow,An' the moon above in a weddin' dressGoes fogged an' slow--Tha's been snowed up i' this cottage wi' me,    Nay, I'm tellin' thee summat.--Tha's bin snowed up i' this cottage wi' meWhile th' clocks has a' run down an' stoppedAn' the short days withering silentlyUnbeknown have dropped.    --Yea, but I'm tellin' thee summat.How many days dost think has gone?--    Now I'm tellin' thee summat.How many days dost think has gone?How many days has the candle-light shoneOn us as tha got more white an' wan?--Seven days, or none--    Am I not tellin' thee summat?Tha come to bid farewell to me--    Tha'rt frit o' summat.To kiss me and shed a tear wi' me,Then off and away wi' the weddin' ringFor the girl who was grander, and better than meFor marrying--    Tha'rt frit o' summat?I durstna kiss thee tha trembles so,Tha arena very flig to go,'Appen the mist from the thawin' snowDaunts thee--it isna for love, I know,That tha'rt loath to go.    --Dear o' me, say summat.Maun tha cling to the wa' as tha goes,    So bad as that?Tha'lt niver get into thy weddin' clothesAt that rate--eh, theer goes thy hat;Ne'er mind, good-bye lad, now I loseMy joy, God knows,    --An' worse nor that.The road goes under the apple tree;    Look, for I'm showin' thee summat.An' if it worn't for the mist, tha'd seeThe great black wood on all sides o' theeWi' the little pads going cunninglyTo ravel thee.    So listen, I'm tellin' thee summat.When tha comes to the beechen avenue,    I'm warnin' thee o' summat.Mind tha shall keep inwards, a fewSteps to the right, for the gravel pitsAre steep an' deep wi' watter, an' youAre scarce o' your wits.    Remember, I've warned the o' summat.An' mind when crossin' the planken bridge,    Again I warn ye o' summat.Ye slip not on the slippery ridgeOf the thawin' snow, or it'll beA long put-back to your gran' marridge,I'm tellin' ye.    Nay, are ter scared o' summat?In kep the thick black curtains drawn,Against the knockin' of sevenfold dawn,An' red-tipped candles from morn to mornHave dipped an' danced upon thy brawnTill thou art worn--    Oh, I have cost thee summat.Look in the mirror an' see thy-sen,    --What, I am showin' thee summat.Wasted an' wan tha sees thy-sen,An' thy hand that holds the mirror shakesTill tha drops the glass and tha shudders whenThy luck breaks.    Sure, tha'rt afraid o' summat.Frail thou art, my saucy man,    --Listen, I'm tellin' thee summat.Tottering and tired thou art, my man,Tha came to say good-bye to me,An' tha's done it so well, that now I canPart wi' thee.    --Master, I'm givin' thee summat. =A Snowy Day in School=All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silenceMuffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that passDown the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly--But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow lightHave shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,Like full-blown flowers dimly shaking at the night,Like floating froth on an ebbing shore in the moon.Out of each star, dark, strange beams that disquiet:In the open depths of each flower, dark restless drops:Twin bubbles, shadow-full of mystery and challenge in the foam'swhispering riot:--How can I answer the challenge of so many eyes!The thick snow is crumpled on the roof, it plunges downAwfully. Must I call back those hundred eyes?--A voiceWakes from the hum, faltering about a noun--My question! My God, I must break from this hoarse silenceThat rustles beyond the stars to me.--There,I have startled a hundred eyes, and I must lookThem an answer back. It is more than I can bear.The snow descends as if the dull sky shookIn flakes of shadow down; and through the gapBetween the ruddy schools sweeps one black rook.The rough snowball in the playground stands huge and stillWith fair flakes settling down on it.--Beyond, the townIs lost in the shadowed silence the skies distil.And all things are possessed by silence, and they can broodWrapped up in the sky's dim space of hoarse silenceEarnestly--and oh for me this class is a bitter rood.=The Best of School=  The blinds are drawn because of the sun,  And the boys and the room in a colourless gloom  Of under-water float: bright ripples run  Across the walls as the blinds are blown  To let the sunlight in; and I,  As I sit on the beach of the class alone,  Watch the boys in their summer blouses,  As they write, their round heads busily bowed:  And one after another rouses  And lifts his face and looks at me,  And my eyes meet his very quietly,  Then he turns again to his work, with glee.  With glee he turns, with a little glad  Ecstasy of work he turns from me,  An ecstasy surely sweet to be had.  And very sweet while the sunlight waves  In the fresh of the morning, it is to be  A teacher of these young boys, my slaves  Only as swallows are slaves to the eaves  They build upon, as mice are slaves  To the man who threshes and sows the sheaves.                  Oh, sweet it is  To feel the lads' looks light on me,  Then back in a swift, bright flutter to work,  As birds who are stealing turn and flee.  Touch after touch I feel on me  As their eyes glance at me for the grain  Of rigour they taste delightedly.                      And all the class,  As tendrils reached out yearningly  Slowly rotate till they touch the tree  That they cleave unto, that they leap along  Up to their lives--so they to me.  So do they cleave and cling to me,  So I lead them up, so do they twine  Me up, caress and clothe with free  Fine foliage of lives this life of mine;  The lowest stem of this life of mine,  The old hard stem of my life  That bears aloft towards rarer skies  My top of life, that buds on high  Amid the high wind's enterprise.  They all do clothe my ungrowing life  With a rich, a thrilled young clasp of life;  A clutch of attachment, like parenthood,  Mounts up to my heart, and I find it good.And I lift my head upon the troubled tangled world, and though the painOf living my life were doubled, I still have this to comfort andsustain,I have such swarming sense of lives at the base of me, such sense oflivesClustering upon me, reaching up, as each after the other strivesTo follow my life aloft to the fine wild air of life and the storm ofthought,And though I scarcely see the boys, or know that they are there,distraughtAs I am with living my life in earnestness, still progressively andalone,Though they cling, forgotten the most part, not companions, scarcelyknownTo me--yet still because of the sense of their closeness clingingdensely to me,And slowly fingering up my stem and following all tinilyThe way that I have gone and now am leading, they are dear to me.  They keep me assured, and when my soul feels lonely,  All mistrustful of thrusting its shoots where only  I alone am living, then it keeps  Me comforted to feel the warmth that creeps  Up dimly from their striving; it heartens my strife:  And when my heart is chill with loneliness,  Then comforts it the creeping tenderness  Of all the strays of life that climb my life.=Afternoon in School=  When will the bell ring, and end this weariness?How long have they tugged the leash, and strained apartMy pack of unruly hounds: I cannot startThem again on a quarry of knowledge they hate to hunt,I can haul them and urge them no more.No more can I endure to bear the bruntOf the books that lie out on the desks: a full three scoreOf several insults of blotted page and scrawlOf slovenly work that they have offered me.I am sick, and tired more than any thrallUpon the woodstacks working weariedly.                                And shall I takeThe last dear fuel and heap it on my soulTill I rouse my will like a fire to consumeTheir dross of indifference, and burn the scrollOf their insults in punishment?--I will not!I will not waste myself to embers for them,Not all for them shall the fires of my life be hot,For myself a heap of ashes of weariness, till sleepShall have raked the embers clear: I will keepSome of my strength for myself, for if I should sellIt all for them, I should hate them--            --I will sit and wait for the bell.    I          O the splendour of our joy, woven of gold in the          silken air!          Here is our pleasant house and its airy gables,          and the garden and the orchard.          Here is the bench beneath the apple-trees, whence          the white spring is shed in slow, caressing          petals.          Here flights of luminous wood-pigeons, like          harbingers, soar in the clear sky of the          countryside.          Here, kisses fallen upon earth from the mouth of          the frail azure, are two blue ponds, simple and          pure, artlessly bordered with involuntary flowers.          O the splendour of our joy and of ourselves in          this garden where we live upon our emblems.                    Although we saw this bright garden, wherein we          pass silently, flower before our eyes, it is          rather in us that grows the pleasantest and          fairest garden in the world.          For we live all the flowers, all the plants and          all the grasses in our laughter and our tears of          pure and calm happiness.          For we live all the transparencies of the blue          pond that reflects the rich growths of the golden          roses and the great vermilion lilies, sun-lips          and mouths.          For we live all joy, thrown out in the cries          of festival and spring of our avowals, wherein          heartfelt and uplifting words sing side by side.          Oh! is it not indeed in us that grows the          pleasantest and the gladdest garden in the world?                    This barbaric capital, whereon monsters writhe,          soldered together by the might of claw and tooth,          in a mad whirl of blood, of fiery cries, of          wounds, and of jaws that bite and bite again,          This was myself before you were mine, you who are          new and old, and who, from the depths of your          eternity, came to me with passion and kindness in          your hands.          I feel the same deep, deep things sleeping in you          as in me, and our thirst for remembrance drink up          the echo in which our pasts answer each to each.          Our eyes must have wept at the same hours,          without our knowing, during childhood, have had          the same terrors, the same happinesses, the same          flashes of trust;          For I am bound to you by the unknown that watched          me of old down the avenues through which my          adventurous life passed; and, indeed, if I had          looked more closely, I might have seen, long ago,          within its eyes your own eyes open.                    The sky has unfolded into night, and the moon          seems to watch over the sleeping silence.          All is so pure and clear; all is so pure and so          pale in the air and on the lakes of the friendly          countryside, that there is anguish in the fall          from a reed of a drop of water, that tinkles and          then is silent in the water.          But I have your hands between mine and your          steadfast eyes that hold me so gently with their          earnestness; and I feel that you are so much at          peace with everything that nothing, not even a          fleeting suspicion of fear, will overcast, be it          but for a moment, the holy trust that sleeps in          us as an infant rests.          V          Each hour I brood upon your goodness, so simple          in its depth, I lose myself in prayers to you.          I came so late towards the gentleness of your          eyes, and from so far towards your two hands          stretched out quietly over the wide spaces.          I had in me so much stubborn rust that gnawed my          confidence with its ravenous teeth.          I was so heavy, was so tired, I was so old with          misgiving.          I was so heavy, I was so tired of the vain road          of all my footsteps.          I deserved so little the wondrous joy of seeing          your feet illuminate my path that I am still          trembling and almost in tears, and humble, for          ever and ever, before my happiness.                    Sometimes you wear the kindly grace of the garden          in early morning that, quiet and winding, unfolds          in the blue distances its pleasant paths, curved          like the necks of swans.          And, at other times, you are for me the bright          thrill of the swift, exalting wind that passes          with its lightning fingers through the watery          mane of the white pond.          At the good touch of your two hands, I feel as          though leaves were caressing me lightly; and,          when midday burns the garden, the shadows at once          gather up the dear words with which your being          trembled.          Thus, thanks to you, each moment seems to pass in          me divinely; so, at the hour of wan night, when          you hide within yourself, shutting your eyes, you          feel my gentle, devout gaze, humbler and longer          than a prayer, thank yours beneath your closed          eyelids.                    Oh! let the passing hand knock with its futile          fingers on the door; our hour is so unique, and          the rest--what matters the rest with its futile          fingers?          Let dismal, tiresome joy keep to the road and          pass on with its rattles in its hand.          Let laughter swell and clatter and die away; let          the crowd pass with its thousands of voices.          The moment is so lovely with light in the garden          about us; the moment is so rare with virgin light          in our heart deep down in us.          Everything tells us to expect nothing more from          that which comes or passes, with tired songs and          weary arms, on the roads,          And to remain the meek who bless the day, even          when night is before us barricaded with darkness,          loving in ourselves above all else the idea that,          gently, we conceive of our love.                    As in the simple ages, I have given you my heart,          like a wide-spreading flower that opens pure and          lovely in the dewy hours; within its moist petals          my lips have rested.          The flower, I gathered it with fingers of flame;          say nothing to it: for all words are perilous; it          is through the eyes that soul listens to soul.          The flower that is my heart and my avowal          confides in all simplicity to your lips that it          is loyal, bright and good, and that we trust in          virgin love as a child trusts in God.          Leave wit to flower on the hills in freakish          paths of vanity; and let us give a simple welcome          to the sincerity that holds our two true hearts          within its crystalline hands;          Nothing is so lovely as a confession of souls          one to the other, in the evening, when the flame          of the uncountable diamonds burns like so many          silent eyes the silence of the firmaments.                    Young and kindly spring who clothes our garden          with beauty makes lucid our voices and words, and          steeps them in his limpidity.          The breeze and the lips of the leaves babble,          and slowly shed in us the syllables of their          brightness.          But the best in us turns away and flees material          words; a mute and mild and simple rapture, better          than all speech, moors our happiness to its true          heaven:          The rapture of your soul, kneeling in all          simplicity before mine, and of my soul, kneeling          in gentleness before yours.          X          Come with slow steps and sit near the gardenbed,          whose flowers of tranquil light are shut by          evening; let the great night filter through you:          we are too happy for our prayer to be disturbed          by its sea of dread.          Above, the pure crystal of the stars is lit up;          behold the firmament clearer and more translucent          than a blue pond or the stained-glass window          in an apse; and then behold heaven that gazes          through.          The thousand voices of the vast mystery speak          around you; the thousand laws of all nature are          in movement about you; the silver bows of the          invisible take your soul and its fervour for          target,          But you are not afraid, oh! simple heart, you          are not afraid, since your faith is that the          whole earth works in harmony with that love that          brought forth in you life and its mystery.          Clasp then your hands tranquilly, and adore          gently; a great counsel of purity floats like          a strange dawn beneath the midnights of the          firmament.                    How readily delight is aroused in her, with her          eyes of fiery ecstasy, she who is gentle and          resigned before life in so simple a fashion.          This evening, how a look surprised her fervour          and a word transported her to the pure garden of          gladness, where she was at once both queen and          servant.          Humble of herself, but aglow with our two selves,          she vied with me in kneeling to gather the          wondrous happiness that overflowed mutually from          our hearts.          We listened to the dying down in us of the          violence of the exalting love imprisoned in our          arms, and to the living silence that said words          we did not know.                    At the time when I had long suffered and the          hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as          the welcoming light that shines from the windows          on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings.          The brightness of your hospitable soul touched my          heart lightly without wounding it, like a hand of          tranquil warmth.          Then came a holy trust, and an open heart, and          affection, and the union at last of our two          loving hands, one evening of clear understanding          and of gentle calm.          Since then, although summer has followed frost          both in ourselves and beneath the sky whose          eternal flames deck with gold all the paths of          our thoughts;          And although our love has become an immense          flower, springing from proud desire, that ever          begins anew within our heart, to grow yet better;          I still look back on the small light that was          sweet to me, the first.                    And what matters the wherefores and the reasons,          and who we were and who we are; all doubt is dead          in this garden of blossoms that opens up in us          and about us, so far from men.          I do not argue, and do not desire to know, and          nothing will disturb what is but mystery and          gentle raptures and involuntary fervour and          tranquil soaring towards our heaven of hope.          I feel your brightness before understanding that          you are so; and it is my gladness, infinitely, to          perceive myself thus gently loving without asking          why your voice calls me.          Let us be simple and good--and day be minister of          light and affection to us; and let them say that          life is not made for a love like ours.                    In my dreams, I sometimes pair you with those          queens who slowly descend the golden, flowered          stairways of legend; I give you names that are          married with beauty, splendour and gladness, and          that rustle in silken syllables along verses          built as a platform for the dance of words and          their stately pageantries.          But how quickly I tire of the game, seeing you          gentle and wise, and so little like those whose          attitudes men embellish.          Your brow, so shining and pure and white with          certitude, your gentle, childlike hands peaceful          upon your knees, your breasts rising and falling          with the rhythm of your pulse that beats like          your immense, ingenuous heart,          Oh! how everything, except that and your prayer,          oh! how everything is poor and empty, except the          light that gazes at me and welcomes me in your          naked eyes.                    I dedicate to your tears, to your smile, my          gentlest thoughts, those I tell you, those also          that remain undefined and too deep to tell.          I dedicate to your tears, to your smile, to your          whole soul, my soul, with its tears and its          smiles and its kiss.          See, the dawn whitens the ground that is the          colour of lees of wine; shadowy bonds seem to          slip and glide away with melancholy; the water          of the ponds grows bright and sifts its noise;          the grass glitters and the flowers open, and the          golden woods free themselves from the night.          Oh! what if we could one day enter thus into the          full light; oh, what if we could one day, with          conquering cries and lofty prayers, with no more          veils upon us and no more remorse in us, oh! what          if we could one day enter together into lucid          love.                    I drown my entire soul in your two eyes, and          the mad rapture of that frenzied soul, so that,          having been steeped in their gentleness and          prayer, it may be returned to me brighter and of          truer temper.          O for a union that refines the being, as two          golden windows in the same apse cross their          differently lucent fires and interpenetrate!          I am sometimes so heavy, so weary of being one          who cannot be perfect, as he would! My heart          struggles with its desires, my heart whose evil          weeds, between the rocks of stubbornness, rear          slyly their inky or burning flowers;          My heart, so false, so true, as the day may be,          my contradictory heart, my heart ever exaggerated          with immense joy or with criminal fear.                    To love with our eyes, let us lave our gaze of          the gaze of those whose glances we have crossed,          by thousands, in life that is evil and enthralled.          The dawn is of flowers and dew and the mildest          sifted light; soft plumes of silver and sun seem          through the mists to brush and caress the mosses          in the garden.          Our blue and marvellous ponds quiver and come to          life with shimmering gold; emerald wings pass          under the trees; and the brightness sweeps from          the roads, the garths and the hedges the damp          ashen fog in which the twilight still lingers.                    In the garden of our love, summer still goes          on: yonder, a golden peacock crosses an avenue;          petals--pearls, emeralds, turquoises --deck the          uniform slumber of the green swards.          Our blue ponds shimmer, covered with the          white kiss of the snowy water-lilies; in the          quincunxes, our currant bushes follow one another          in procession; an iridescent insect teases the          heart of a flower; the marvellous undergrowths          are veined with gleams; and, like light bubbles,          a thousand bees quiver along the arbours over the          silver grapes.          The air is so lovely that it seems rainbow-hued;          beneath the deep and radiant noons, it stirs          as if it were roses of light; while, in the          distance, the customary roads, like slow          movements stretching their vermilion to the          pearly horizon, climb towards the sun.          Indeed, the diamonded gown of this fine          summer clothes no other garden with so pure a          brightness. And the unique joy sprung up in          our two hearts discovers its own life in these          clusters of flames.                    May your bright eyes, your eyes of summer, be for          me here on earth the images of goodness.          Let our enkindled souls clothe with gold each          flame of our thoughts.          May my two hands against your heart be for you          here on earth the emblems of gentleness.          Let us live like two frenzied prayers straining          at all hours one towards the other.          May our kisses on our enraptured mouths be for us          here on earth the symbols of our life.                    Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell          me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens          and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its          sleeping scalds?          I go to meet those who are returning from the          wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I          sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on          the road, watching their coming, I gaze and gaze          earnestly at their eyes still bright with having          seen you.          And I would kiss their fingers that have touched          you, and cry out to them words they would not          understand; and I listen a long while to the          rhythm of their steps towards the shadow where          the old evenings hold night prone.                    During those hours wherein we are lost so far          from all that is not ourselves, what lustral          blood or what baptism bathes our hearts that          strain towards all love?          Clasping our hands without praying, stretching          out our arms without crying aloud, but with          earnest and ingenuous mind worshipping something          farther off and purer than ourselves, we know not          what, how we blend with, how we live our lives          in, the unknown.          How overwhelmed we are in the presence of those          hours of supreme existence; how the soul desires          heavens in which to seek for new gods.          Oh! the torturing and wondrous joy and the daring          hope of being one day, across death itself, the          prey of these silent terrors.                    Oh! this happiness, sometimes so rare and frail          that it frightens us!          In vain we hush our voices, and make of all your          hair a tent to shelter us; often the anguish in          our hearts flows over.          But our love, being like a kneeling angel, begs          and supplicates that the future give to others          than ourselves a like affection and life, so that          their fate may not be envious of ours.          And, too, on evil days, when the great evenings          extend to heaven the bounds of despair, we ask          forgiveness of the night that kindles with the          gentleness of our heart.                    Let us, in our love and ardour, let us live so          boldly our finest thoughts that they interweave          in harmony with the supreme ecstasy and perfect          fervour.          Because in our kindred souls something more holy          than we and purer and greater awakens, let us          clasp hands to worship it through ourselves.          It matters not that we have only cries or tears          to define it humbly, and that its charm is so          rare and powerful that, in the enjoyment of it,          our hearts are nigh to failing us.          Even so, let us remain, and for ever, the mad          devotees of this almost implacable love, and the          kneeling worshippers of the sudden God who reigns          in us, so violent and so ardently gentle that he          hurts and overwhelms us.                    So soon as our lips touch, we feel so much more          luminous together that it would seem as though          two Gods loved and united in us.          We feel our hearts to be so divinely fresh and          so renewed by their virgin light that, in their          brightness, the universe is made manifest to us.          In our eyes, joy is the only ferment of the world          that ripens and becomes fruitful innumerably on          our roads here below; as in clusters spring up          among the silken lakes on which sails travel the          myriad blossoms of the stars above.          Order dazzles us as fire embers, everything          bathes us in its light and appears a torch to us:          our simple words have a sense so lovely that we          repeat them to hear them without end.          We are the sublime conquerors who vanquish          eternity without pride and without a thought of          trifling time: and our love seems to us always to          have been.                    To prevent the escape of any part of us from our          embrace that is so intense as to be holy, and to          let love shine clear through the body itself, we          go down together to the garden of the flesh.          Your breasts are there like offerings and your          two hands are stretched out to me; and nothing is          of so much worth as the simple provender of words          said and heard.          The shadow of the white boughs travels over your          neck and face, and your hair unloosens its bloom          in garlands on the swards.          The night is all of blue silver; the night is a          lovely silent bed--gentle night whose breezes,          one by one, will strip the great lilies erect in          the moonlight.                    Although autumn this evening along the paths and          the woods' edges lets the leaves fall slowly like          gilded hands;          Although autumn this evening with its arms of          wind harvests the petals and their pallor of the          earnest rose-trees;          We shall let nothing of our two souls fall          suddenly with these flowers.          But before the flames of the golden hearth of          memory, we will both crouch and warm our hands          and knees.          To guard against the sorrows hidden in the          future, against time that makes an end of all          ardour, against our terror and even against          ourselves, we will both crouch near the hearth          that our memory has lit up in us.          And if autumn involves the woods, the lawns and          the ponds in great banks of shadow and soaring          storms, at least its pain shall not disturb the          inner quiet garden where the equal footsteps of          our thoughts walk together in the light.                    The gift of the body when the soul is given is          but the accomplishment of two affections drawn          headlong one towards the other.          You are only happy in your body that is so lovely          in its native freshness because in all fervour          you may offer it to me wholly as a total alms.          And I give myself to you knowing nothing except          that I am greater by knowing you, who are ever          better and perhaps purer since your gentle body          offered its festival to mine.          Love, oh! let it be for us the sole discernment          and the sole reason of our heart, for us whose          most frenzied happiness is to be frenzied in our          trust.                    Was there in us one fondness, one thought, one          gladness, one promise that we had not sown before          our footsteps?          Was there a prayer heard in secret whose hands          stretched out gently over our bosom we had not          clasped?          Was there one appeal, one purpose, one tranquil          or violent desire whose pace we had not quickened?          And each loving the other thus, our hearts went          out as apostles to the gentle, timid and chilled          hearts of others;          And by the power of thought invited them to          feel akin to ours, and, with frank ardours, to          proclaim love, as a host of flowers loves the          same branch that suspends and bathes it in the          sun.          And our soul, as though made greater in this          awakening, began to celebrate all that loves,          magnifying love for love's sake, and to cherish          divinely, with a wild desire, the whole world          that is summed up in us.                    The lovely garden blossoming with flames that          seemed to us the double or the mirror of the          bright garden we carried in our hearts is          crystallized in frost and gold this evening.          A great white silence has descended and sits          yonder on the marble horizons, towards which          march the trees in files, with their blue,          immense and regular shadow beside them.          No puff of wind, no breath. Alone, the great          veils of cold spread from plain to plain over the          silver marshes or crossing roads.          The stars appear to live. The hoar-frost shines          like steel through the translucent, frozen air.          Bright powdered metals seem to snow down, in the          infinite distances, from the pallor of a copper          moon. Everything sparkles in the stillness.          And it is the divine hour when the mind is          haunted by the thousand glances that are cast          upon earth by kind and pure and unchangeable          eternity towards the hazards of human          wretchedness.                    If it should ever happen that, without our          knowledge, we became a pain or torment or despair          one to the other;          If it should come about that weariness or          hackneyed pleasure unbent in us the golden bow of          lofty desire;          If the crystal of pure thought must fall in our          hearts and break;          If, in spite of all, I should feel myself          vanquished because I had not bowed my will          sufficiently to the divine immensity of goodness;          Then, oh! then let us embrace like two sublime          madmen who beneath the broken skies cling to the          summits even so--and with one flight and soul          ablaze grow greater in death.                       I          Step by step, day by day, age has come and placed          his hands upon the bare forehead of our love, and          has looked upon it with his dimmer eyes.          And in the fair garden shrivelled by July, the          flowers, the groves and the living leaves have          let fall something of their fervid strength on          to the pale pond and the gentle paths. Here and          there, the sun, harsh and envious, marks a hard          shadow around his light.          And yet the hollyhocks still persist in their          growth towards their final splendour, and the          seasons weigh upon our life in vain; more than          ever, all the roots of our two hearts plunge          unsatiated into happiness, and clutch, and sink          deeper.          Oh! these hours of afternoon girt with roses that          twine around time, and rest against his benumbed          flanks with cheeks aflower and aflame!          And nothing, nothing is better than to feel thus,          still happy and serene, after how many years?          But if our destiny had been quite different, and          we had both been called upon to suffer--even          then!--oh! I should have been happy to live and          die, without complaining, in my stubborn love.          Roses of June, you the fairest with your hearts          transfixed by the sun; violent and tranquil          roses, like a delicate flock of birds settled on          the branches;          Roses of June and July, upright and new, mouths          and kisses that suddenly move or grow still with          the coming and going of the wind, caress of          shadow and gold on the restless garden;          Roses of mute ardour and gentle will, roses of          voluptuousness in your mossy sheaths, you who          spend the days of high summer loving each other          in the brightness;          Fresh, glowing, magnificent roses, all our roses,          oh! that, like you, our manifold desires, in our          dear weariness or trembling pleasure, might love          and exalt each other and rest!          If other flowers adorn the house and the          splendour of the countryside, the pure ponds          shine still in the grass with the great eyes of          water of their mobile face.          Who can say from what far-off and unknown          distances so many new birds have come with sun on          their wings?          In the garden, April has given way to July, and          the blue tints to the great carnation tints;          space is warm and the wind frail; a thousand          insects glisten joyously in the air; and summer          passes in her robe of diamonds and sparks.          The darkness is lustral and the dawn iridescent.          From the lofty branch whence a bird flies, the          dew-drops fall.          A lucid and frail purity adorns a morning so          bright that prisms seem to gleam in the air. A          spring babbles; a noise of wings is heard.          Oh! how beautiful are your eyes at that first          hour when our silver ponds shimmer in the light          and reflect the day that is rising. Your forehead          is radiant and your blood beats.          Intense and wholesome life in all its divine          strength enters your bosom so completely, like a          driving happiness, that to contain its anguish          and its fury, your hands suddenly take mine, and          press them almost fearfully against your heart.          I bring you this evening, as an offering, my joy          at having plunged my body into the silk and gold          of the frank and joyous wind and the gorgeous          sun; my feet are bright with having walked among          the grasses; my hands sweet with having touched          the heart of flowers; my eyes shining at having          felt the tears suddenly well up and spring into          them before the earth in festival and its eternal          strength.          Space has carried me away drunken and fervent          and sobbing in its arms of moving brightness;          and I have passed I know not where, far away in          the distance, with pent-up cries set free by my          footsteps.          I bring you life and the beauty of the plains          breathe them on me in a good, frank breath; the          marjoram has caressed my fingers, and the air and          its light and its perfumes are in my flesh.          Let us both sit down on the old worm-eaten bench          near the path; and let my hand remain a long          while within your two steadfast hands.          With my hand that remains a long while given          up to the sweet consciousness of being on your          knees, my heart also, my earnest, gentle heart,          seems to rest between your two kind hands.          And we share an intense joy and a deep love to          feel that we are so happy together, without one          over-strong word to come trembling to our lips,          or one kiss even to go burning towards your brow.          And we would prolong the ardour of this silence          and the stillness of our mute desires, were it          not that suddenly, feeling them quiver, I clasp          tightly, without willing it, your thinking hands;          Your hands in which my whole happiness is hidden,          and which would never, for anything in the world,          deal violently with those deep things we live by,          although in duty we do not speak of them.          Gently, more gently still, cradle my head in your          arms, my fevered brow and my weary eyes;          Gently, more gently still, kiss my lips, and          say to me those words that are sweeter at each          dawn when your voice repeats them, and you have          surrendered, and I love you still.          The day rises sullen and heavy; the night was          crossed by monstrous dreams; the rain and its          long hair whip our casement, and the horizon is          black with clouds of grief.          arms, my fevered brow and my weary eyes; you are          my hopeful dawn, with its caress in your hands          and its light in your sweet words;          See, I am re-born, without pain or shock, to the          daily labour that traces its mark on my road,          and instils into my life the will to be a weapon          of strength and beauty in the golden grasp of an          honoured life.          In the house chosen by our love as its          birth-place, with its cherished furniture          peopling the shadows and the nooks, where we live          together, having as sole witnesses the roses that          watch us through the windows,          Certain days stand out of so great a consolation,          certain hours of summer so lovely in their          silence, that sometimes I stop time that swings          with its golden disc in the oaken clock.          Then the hour, the day, the night is so much ours          that the happiness that hovers lightly over us          hears nothing but the throbbing of your heart and          mine that are brought close together by a sudden          embrace.          The pleasant task with the window open and the          shadow of the green leaves and the passage of          the sun on the ruddy paper, maintains the gentle          violence of its silence in our good and pensive          house.          And the flowers bend nimbly and the large fruits          shine from branch to branch, and the blackbirds,          the bullfinches and the chaffinches sing and          sing, so that my verses may burst forth clear and          fresh, pure and true, like their songs, their          golden flesh and their scarlet petals.          And I see you pass in the garden, sometimes          mingled with the sun and shadow; but your head          does not turn, so that the hour in which I work          jealousy at these frank and gentle poems may not          be disturbed.          In the depth of our love dwells all faith; we          bind up a glowing thought together with the least          things: the awakening of a bud, the decline of a          rose, the flight of a frail and beautiful bird          that, by turns, appears or disappears in the          shadow or the light.          A nest falling to pieces on the mossy edge of          a roof and ravaged by the wind fills the mind          with dread. An insect eating the heart of the          hollyhocks terrifies: all is fear, all is hope.          Though reason with its sharp and soothing snow          may suddenly cool these charming pangs, what          matters! Let us accept them without inquiring          overmuch into the false, the true, the evil or          the good they portend;          Let us be happy that we can be as children,          believing in their fatal or triumphant power, and          let us guard with closed shutters against too          sensible people.          Dawn, darkness, evening, space and the stars;          that which the night conceals or shows between          its veils is mingled with the fervour of our          exalted being. Those who live with love live with          eternity.          It matters not that their reason approve or          scoff, and, upright on its high walls, hold out          to them, along the quays and harbours, its bright          torches; they are the travellers from beyond the          sea.          Far off, farther than the ocean and its black          floods, they watch the day break from shore to          shore; fixed certainty and trembling hope present          the same front to their ardent gaze.          Happy and serene, they believe eagerly; their          soul is the deep and sudden brightness with which          they burn the summit of the loftiest problems;          and to know the world, they but scrutinize          themselves.          They follow distant roads chosen by themselves,          living with the truths enclosed within their          simple, naked eyes, that are deep and gentle as          the dawn; and for them alone there is still song          in paradise.          This is the holy hour when the lamp is lit:          everything is calm and comforting this evening;          and the silence is such that you could hear the          falling of feathers.          This is the holy hour when gently the beloved          comes, like the breeze or smoke, most gently,          most slowly. At first, she says nothing--and I          listen; and I catch a glimpse of her soul, that          I hear wholly, shining and bursting forth; and I          kiss her on the eyes.          This is the holy hour when the lamp is lit, when          the acknowledgment of mutual love the whole day          long is brought forth from the depths of our deep          but transparent heart.          And we each tell the other of the simplest          things: the fruit gathered in the garden, the          flower that has opened between the green mosses;          and the thought that has sprung from some          sudden emotion at the memory of a faded word of          affection found at the bottom of an old drawer on          a letter of yesteryear.          The dead kisses of departed years have put their          seal on your face, and, beneath the melancholy          and furrowing wind of age, many of the roses in          your features have faded.          I see your mouth and your great eyes glow no more          like a morning of festival, nor your head slowly          recline in the black and massive garden of your          hair.          Your dear hands, that remain so gentle, approach          no more as in former years with light at their          finger-tips to caress my forehead, as dawn the          mosses.          Your young and lovely body that I adorned with          my thoughts has no longer the pure freshness of          dew, and your arms are no longer like the bright          branches.          Alas! everything falls and fades ceaselessly;          everything has changed, even your voice; your          body has collapsed like a pavise, and let fall          the victories of youth.          But nevertheless my steadfast and earnest heart          says to you: what are to me the years made          heavier day by day, since I know that nothing in          the world will disturb our exalted life, and that          our soul is too profound for love still to depend          on beauty?          For fifteen years our thoughts have run together,          and our fine and serene ardour has vanquished          habit, the dull-voiced shrew whose slow, rough          hands wear out the most stubborn and the          strongest love.          I look at you and I discover you each day, so          intimate is your gentleness or your pride: time          indeed obscures the eyes of your beauty, but it          exalts your heart, whose golden depths peep open.          Artlessly, you allow yourself to be probed and          known, and your soul always appears fresh and          new; with gleaming masts, like an eager caravel,          our happiness covers the seas of our desires.          It is in us alone that we anchor our faith, to          naked sincerity and simple goodness; we move          and live in the brightness of a joyous and          translucent trust.          Your strength is to be infinitely pure and frail;          to cross with burning heart all dark roads, and          to have preserved, in spite of mist or darkness,          all the rays of the dawn in your childlike soul.          I thought our joy benumbed for ever, like a          sun faded before it was night, on the day that          illness with its leaden arms dragged me heavily          towards its chair of weariness.          The flowers and the garden were fear or deception          to me; my eyes suffered to see the white noons          flaming, and my two hands, my hands, seemed,          before their time, too tired to hold captive our          trembling happiness.          My desires had become no more than evil weeds;          they bit at each other like thistles in the wind;          I felt my heart to be at once ice and burning          coal and of a sudden dried up and stubborn in          forgiveness.          But you said the word that gently comforts,          seeking it nowhere else than in your immense          love; and I lived with the fire of your word, and          at night warmed myself at it until the dawn of          day.          The diminished man I felt myself to be, both to          myself and all others, did not exist for you; you          gathered flowers for me from the window-sill,          and, with your faith, I believed in health.          And you brought to me, in the folds of your gown,          the keen air, the wind of the fields and forests,          and the perfumes of evening or the scents of          dawn, and, in your fresh and deep-felt kisses,          the sun.          Everything that lives about us in the fragile and          gentle light, frail grasses, tender branches,          hollyhocks, and the shadow that brushes them          lightly by, and the wind that knots them, and the          singing and hopping birds that swarm riotously          in the sun like clusters of jewels,-- everything          that lives in the fine ruddy garden loves us          artlessly, and we--we love everything.          We worship the lilies we see growing; and the          tall sunflowers, brighter than the Nadir--          circles surrounded by petals of flames--burn our          souls through their glow.          The simplest flowers, the phlox and the lilac,          grow along the walls among the feverfew, to be          nearer to our footsteps; and the involuntary          weeds in the turf over which we have passed open          their eyes wet with dew.          And we live thus with the flowers and the grass,          simple and pure, glowing and exalted, lost in our          love, like the sheaves in the gold of the corn,          and proudly allowing the imperious summer to          pierce our bodies, our hearts and our two wills          with its full brightness.          Because you came one day so simply along the          paths of devotion and took my life into your          beneficent hands, I love and praise and thank you          with my senses, with my heart and brain, with my          whole being stretched like a torch towards your          unquenchable goodness and charity.          Since that day, I know what love, pure and bright          as the dew, falls from you on to my calmed soul.          I feel myself yours by all the burning ties that          attach flames to their fire; all my body, all my          soul mounts towards you with tireless ardour; I          never cease to brood on your deep earnestness and          your charm, so much so that suddenly I feel my          eyes fill deliciously with unforgettable tears.          And I make towards you, happy and calm, with the          proud desire to be for ever the most steadfast of          joys to you. All our affection flames about us;          every echo of my being responds to your call; the          hour is unique and sanctified with ecstasy, and          my fingers are tremulous at the mere touching of          your forehead, as though they brushed the wing of          your thoughts.          On days of fresh and tranquil health, when life          is as fine as a conquest, the pleasant task sits          down by my side like an honoured friend.          He comes from gentle, radiant countries, with          words brighter than the dews, in which to set,          illuminating them, our feelings and our thoughts.          He seizes our being in a mad whirlwind; he lifts          up the mind on giant pilasters; he pours into it          the fire that makes the stars live; he brings the          gift of being God suddenly.          And fevered transports and deep terrors-- all          serves his tragic will to make young again the          blood of beauty in the veins of the world.          I am at his mercy like a glowing prey.          Therefore, when I return, though wearied and          heavy, to the repose of your love, with the fires          of my vast and supreme idea, it seems to me--oh!          but for a moment--that I am bringing to you in          my panting heart the heart-beat of the universe          itself.          Out of the groves of sleep I came, somewhat          morose because I had left you beneath their          branches and their braided shadows, far from the          glad morning sun.          Already the phlox and the hollyhocks glisten, and          I wander in the garden dreaming of verses clear          as crystal and silver that would ring in the          light.          Then abruptly I return to you with so great a          fervour and emotion that it seems to me as though          my thought suddenly has already crossed from afar          the leafy and heavy darkness of sleep to call          forth your joy and your awakening.          And when I join you once more in our warm house          that is still possessed by darkness and silence,          my clear, frank kisses ring like a dawn-song in          the valleys of your flesh.          Alas! when the lead of illness flowed in my          benumbed veins with my heavy, sluggish blood,          with my blood day by day heavier and more          sluggish;          When my eyes, my poor eyes, followed peevishly on          my long, pale hands the fatal marks of insidious          malady;          When my skin dried up like bark, and I had no          longer even strength enough to press my fiery          lips against your heart, and there kiss our          happiness;          When sad and identical days morosely gnawed my          life, I might never have found the will and the          strength to hold out stoically,          Had you not, each hour of the so long weeks,          poured into my daily body with your patient,          gentle, placid hands the secret heroism that          flowed in yours.          Our bright garden is health itself.          It is squandered in its brightness from the          thousand hands of the branches and leaves as they          wave to and fro.          And the pleasant shade that welcomes our feet          after the long roads pours into our tired limbs          a quickening strength, gentle as the garden's          When the pond plays with the wind and the sun, a          ruddy heart seems to dwell in the depths of the          water, and to beat, ardent and young, with the          ripples; and the tall, straight gladioli and the          glowing roses that move in their splendour hold          out their golden goblets of red blood at the end          of their living stalks.          It was June in the garden, our hour and our day,          and our eyes looked upon all things with so          great a love that the roses seemed to us to open          gently, and to see and love us.          The sky was purer than it had ever been: the          insects and birds floated in the gold and          gladness of an air as frail as silk, and our          kisses were so exquisite that they gave an added          beauty to the sunshine and the birds.          It was as though our happiness had suddenly          become azure, and required the whole sky wherein          to shine; through gentle openings, all life          entered our being, to expand it.          And we were nothing but invocatory cries, and          wild raptures, and vows and entreaties, and the          need, suddenly, to recreate the gods, in order to          believe.          The gift of yourself no longer satisfies you; you          are prodigal of yourself: the rapture that bears          you on to ever greater love springs up in you          ceaselessly and untiringly, and carries you ever          higher towards the wide heaven of perfect love.          A clasp of the hands, a gentle look impassions          you; and your heart appears to me so suddenly          lovely that I am afraid sometimes of your eyes          and your lips, and that I am unworthy and that          you love me too much.          Ah! these bright ardours of an affection too          lofty for a poor human being who has only a poor          heart, all moist with regrets, all thorny with          faults, to feel their passing and dissolve in          tears.          Oh! the calm summer garden where nothing moves!          Unless it be, near the middle of the bright and          radiant pond, the goldfish like tongues of fire.          They are our memories playing in our thoughts          that are calm and stilled and limpid, like the          trustful and restful water.          And the water brightens and the fishes leap at          the abrupt and marvellous sun, not far from the          green irises and the white shells and stones,          motionless about the ruddy edges.          And it is sweet to watch them thus come and go          in the freshness and splendour that touches them          lightly, careless and without fear that they          will bring from the depths to the surface other          regrets than fleeting.          As with others, an hour has its ill-humour: the          peevish hour or a malevolent humour has sometimes          stamped our hearts with its black seals; and yet,          in spite of all, even at the close of the darkest          days, never have our hearts said the irrevocable          words.          A radiant and glowing sincerity was our joy and          counsel, and our passionate soul found therein          ever new strength, as in a ruddy flood.          And we recounted each to the other our          wretchedest woes, telling them like some harsh          rosary, as we stood facing one another, with our          love rising in sobs; and our two mouths, at each          avowal, gently and in turn kissed our faults on          the lips that uttered them aloud.          Thus, very simply, without baseness or bitter          words, we escaped from the world and from          ourselves, sparing ourselves all grief and          gnawing cares, and watching the rebirth of our          soul, as the purity of glass and gold of a          window-pane is reborn after the rain, when the          sun warms it and gently dries it.          The golden barks of lovely summer that set out,          riotous for space, are returning sad and weary          from the blood-stained horizons.          With monotonous strokes of the oars, they advance          upon the waters; they are as cradles in which          sleep autumn flowers.          Stalks of lilies with golden brows, you all lie          overthrown; alone, the roses struggle to live          beyond death.          What matters to their full beauty that October          shine or April: their simple and puerile desire          drinks all light until the blood comes.          Even on the blackest days, when the sky dies,          they strive towards Christmas, beneath a harsh          and haggard cloud, the moment the first ray darts          You, our souls, do as they; they have not the          pride of the lilies; but within their folds they          guard a holy and immortal ardour.          Ardour of senses, ardour of hearts, ardour of          souls, vain words created by those who diminish          love; sun, you do not distinguish among your          flames those of evening, of dawn, or of noon!          You walk blinded by your own light in the torrid          azure under the great arched skies, knowing          nothing, unless it be that your strength is          all-powerful and that your fire labours at the          divine mysteries.          For love is an act of ceaseless exaltation. O you          whose gentleness bathes my proud heart, what need          to weigh the pure gold of our dream? I love you          altogether, with my whole being.          The still beauty of summer evenings on the          greenswards where they lie outspread holds out to          us, without empty gesture or words, a symbol of          rest in gladness.          Young morning and its tricks has gone away with          the breezes; noon itself and the velvet skirts          of its warm winds, of its heavy winds, no longer          sweeps the torrid plain; and this is the hour          when, without a branch's moving or a pond's          ruffling its waters, the evening slowly comes          from the tops of the mountains and takes its seat          O the infinite golden flatness of the waters, and          the trees and their shadows on the reeds, and          the calm and sumptuous silence in whose still          presence we so greatly delight that we desire to          live with it always or to die of it and revive          by it, like two imperishable hearts tirelessly          drunken with brightness.          You said to me, one evening, words so beautiful          that doubtless the flowers that leaned towards us          suddenly loved us, and one among them, in order          to touch us both, fell upon our knees.          You spoke to me of a time nigh at hand when our          years like over-ripe fruit would be ready for the          gathering, how the knell of destiny would ring          out, and how we should love each other, feeling          ourselves growing old.          Your voice enfolded me like a dear embrace, and          your heart burned so quietly beautiful, that at          that moment I could have seen without fear the          beginning of the tortuous roads that lead to the          tomb.          "Hours of bright morning," "Hours of afternoon,"          hours that stand out superbly and gently, whose          dance lengthens along our warm garden-paths,          saluted at passing by our golden rose-trees;          summer is dying and autumn coming in.          Hours girt with blossom, will you ever return?          Yet, if destiny, that wields the stars, spares us          its pains, its blows and its disasters, perhaps          one day you will return, and, before my eyes,          interweave in measure your radiant steps;          And I will mingle with your glowing, gentle          dance, winding in shade and sun over the lawns          --like a last, immense and supreme hope--the          steps and farewells of my "hours of evening."                       Dainty flowers, like a froth of foam, grew along          the borders of our paths; the wind fell and the          air seemed to brush your hands and hair with          plumes.          The shade was kindly to us as we walked in step          beneath the leafage; a child's song reached us          from a village, and filled all the infinite.          Our ponds were outspread in their autumn          splendour under the guard of the long reeds, and          the lofty, swaying crown on the woods' fine brow          was mirrored in the waters.          And both knowing that our hearts were brooding          together on the same thought, we reflected that          it was our calmed life that was revealed to us in          this lovely evening.          For one supreme moment, you saw the festival sky          deck itself out and say farewell to us; and for a          long, long while you gave it your eyes filled to          the brim with mute caresses.          If it were true that a garden flower or a meadow          tree could keep some memory of lovers of other          times who admired them in their bloom or their          vigour, our love in this hour of long regret          would come and entrust to the rose or erect          in the oak, before the approach of death, its          sweetness or its strength.          Thus it would survive, victor over funereal care,          in the tranquil godship conferred on it by simple          things; it would still enjoy the pure brightness          cast on life by a summer dawn and the soft rain          hanging to the leaves.          And if on a fine evening, out of the depths of          the plain, a couple came along, holding hands,          the oak would stretch out its broad and powerful          shade like a wing over their path, and the rose          would waft them its frail perfume.          The wistaria is faded and the hawthorn dead; but          this is the season of the heather in flower, and          on this calm and gentle evening the caressing          wind brings you the perfumes of poor Campine.          Love them and breathe them in while brooding over          its fate; its soil is bare and harsh and the wind          wars on it; pools make their holes in it; the          sand preys on it, and the little left to it, it          yet gives.          Once in autumn, we lived with it, with its plain          and its woods, with its rain and its sky, even to          December when the Christmas angels crossed its          legend with mighty strokes of their wings.          Your heart became more steadfast there, simpler          and more human; we loved the people of its old          villages, and the women who spoke to us of their          great age and of spinning-wheels fallen from use,          worn out by their hands.          Our calm house on the misty heath was bright to          look upon and ready in its welcome; and dear to          us were its roof and its door and its threshold          and its hearth blackened by the smoky peat.          When night spread out its total splendour over          the vast and pale and innumerable somnolence, the          silence taught us lessons, the glow of which our          soul has never forgotten.          Because we felt more lonely in the vast plain,          the dawns and the evenings sank more deeply          into us; our eyes were franker, our hearts were          gentler and filled to the brim with the fervour          of the world.          We found happiness by not asking for it; even the          sadness of the days was good for us, and the few          sun-rays of that end of autumn gladdened us all          the more because they seemed weak and tired.          this is the season of the heather in flower. This          evening, remember, and let the caressing wind          bring you the perfumes of poor Campine.          Draw up your chair near mine, and stretch your          hands out towards the hearth that I may see          between your fingers the old flame burning; and          watch the fire quietly with your eyes that fear          no light, that they may be for me still franker          when a quick and flashing ray strikes to their          depths, illuminating them.          Oh! how beautiful and young still our life is          when the clock rings out with its golden tone,          and, coming closer, I brush you lightly and touch          you, and a slow and gentle fever that neither          desires to allay leads the sure and wondrous          kiss from the hands to the forehead and from the          forehead to the lips.          How I love you then, my bright beloved, in your          welcoming, gently swooning body, that encircles          me in its turn and dissolves me in its gladness!          Everything becomes dearer to me--your mouth, your          arms, your kindly breasts where my poor, tired          forehead will lie quietly near your heart after          the moment of riotous pleasure that you grant me.          For I love you still better after the sensual          hour, when your goodness, still more steadfast          and maternal, makes for me a soft repose,          following sharp ardour, and when, after desire          has cried out its violence, I hear approaching          our regular happiness with steps so gentle that          they are but silence.          Be once more merciful and cheering to us, light,          pale brightness of winter that will bathe our          brows when of an afternoon we both go into the          garden to breathe in one last warmth.          We loved you long ago with so great a pride, with          so great a love springing from our hearts, that          one supreme and gentle and kindly flame is due to          us at this hour when grief awaits us.          You are that which no man ever forgets, from the          day when you first struck his victorious arms,          and when, on the coming of evening, you slept in          his eyes with your dead splendour and vanquished          And for us you were always the visible fervour          that, being everywhere diffused and shining in          fevers of deep and stinging ardour, seemed to          start for the infinite from our heart.          Alas! the days of the crimson phlox and of the          proud roses that brightened its gates are far          away, but however faded and withered it may          be--what matters!--I love our garden still with          all my heart.          Its distress is sometimes dearer and sweeter to          me than was its gladness in the burning summer          days. Oh! the last perfume slowly rendered up by          its last flower on its last mosses!          I wandered this evening among its winding          pathways, to touch with my earnest fingers all          its plants; and falling on my knees amid the          trembling grasses, I gave a long kiss to its damp          and heavy soil.          And now let it die, and the mist and night come          and spread over all; all my being seems to          have entered into our garden's ruin, and, by          understanding its death, I shall learn to know my          own.          The evening falls, the moon is golden.          Before the day ends, go gaily into the garden and          pluck with your gentle hands the few flowers that          have not yet bowed sadly towards the earth.          Though their leaves may be wan, what matters! I          admire them and you love them, and their petals          are beautiful, in spite of all, on the stalks          that bear them.          And you went away into the distance among the          box-trees, along a monotonous path, and the          nosegay that you plucked trembled in your hand          and suddenly quivered; and then your dreaming          fingers devoutly gathered together these          glimmering autumn roses and wove them with tears          into a pale and bright and supple crown.          The last light lit up your eyes, and your long          step became sad and silent.          And slowly in the twilight you returned with          empty hands to the house, leaving not far from          our door, on a damp, low hillock, the white          circle that your fingers had formed.          And I understood then that in the weary garden          wherethrough the winds will soon pass like          squadrons, you desired for the last time to adorn          with flowers our youth that lies there dead.          When your hand, on an evening of the sluggish          months, commits to the odorous cupboards the          fruits of your orchard, I seem to see you calmly          arranging our old perfumed and sweet-tasting          memories.          And my relish for them returns, as it was in          former years in the gold and the sun and with          the wind on my lips; and then I see a thousand          moments done and gone, and their gladness and          their laughter and their cries and their fevers.          The past reawakens with so great a desire to be          the present still, with its life and strength,          that the hardly extinguished fires suddenly burn          my body, and my heart rejoices to the point of          swooning.          O beautiful luminous fruits in these autumn          shadows, jewels fallen from the heavy necklace          of russet summer, splendours that light up our          monotonous hours, what a ruddy and spacious          awakening you stir up in us!          And now that the lofty leaves have fallen, that          kept our garden sheltered beneath their shade,          through the bare branches can be seen beyond them          the roofs of the old villages climbing towards          the horizon.          So long as summer poured out its gladness, none          of us saw them grouped so near our door; but now          that the flowers and the leaves are withered, we          often brood on them with gentle thoughts.          Other people live there between stone walls,          behind a worn threshold protected by a coping,          having as sole friends but the wind and the rain          and the lamp shining with its friendly light.          In the darkness at the fall of evening, when the          fire awakens and the clock in which time swings          is hushed, doubtless, as much as we, they love          the silence, to feel themselves thinking through          their eyes.          Nothing disturbs for them or for us those hours          of deep and quiet and tender intimacy wherein the          moment that was is blessed for having been, and          of which the coming hour is always the best.          Indeed, how they also clench the old happiness,          made up of pain and joy, within their trembling          hands; they know each other's bodies that have          grown old together, and each other's looks worn          out by the same sorrows.          The roses of their life, they love them faded,          with their dead glory and their last perfume and          the heavy memory of their dead brightness falling          away, leaf by leaf, in the garden of the years.          Against black winter, like hermits, they stay          crouching within their human fervour, and nothing          disheartens them and nothing leads them to          complain of the days they no longer possess.          Oh! the quiet people in the depths of old          villages! Indeed, do we not feel them neighbours          of our heart! And do we not find in their eyes          our tears and in their courage our strength and          ardour!          They are there beneath their roof, seated          around fires, or lingering sometimes at their          window-sill; and on this evening of spacious,          floating wind, perhaps they have thought of us          what we think of them.          When the starry sky covers our dwelling, we hush          for hours before its intense and gentle fire,          so that we may feel a greater and more fervent          stirring within us.          The great silver stars follow their courses high          up in the heavens; beneath the flames and the          gleams, night spreads out its depths, and the          calm is so great that the ocean listens!          But what matters even the hushing of the sea, if          in the brightness and immensity of space, full of          invisible violence, our hearts beat so strongly          that they make all the silence?          With the same love that you were for me long ago          a garden of splendour whose wavering coppices          shaded the long grass and the docile roses,          you are for me in these black days a calm and          steadfast sanctuary.          All is centred there: your fervour and your          brightness and your movements assembling the          flowers of your goodness; but all is drawn          together closely in a deep peace against the          sharp winds piercing the winter of the world.          My happiness keeps warm there within your folded          arms; your pretty, artless words, in their          gladness and familiarity, sing still with as          great a charm to my ears as in the days of the          white lilac or of the red currants.          Oh! I feel your gay and shining cheerfulness          triumphing day by day over the sorrow of the          years, and you yourself smile at the silver          threads that slip their waving network into your          glossy hair.          When your head bends to my deep-felt kiss, what          does it matter to me that your brow is furrowed,          and that your hands are becoming ridged with hard          veins when I hold them between my two steadfast          hands!          You never complain, and you believe firmly that          nothing true dies when love receives its meed,          and that the living fire on which our soul feeds          consumes even grief to increase its flame.          The flowers of bright welcome along the wall          await us no longer when we go indoors, and our          silken ponds whose smooth waters chafe lie          outstretched no more beneath pure, soft skies.          All the birds have fled our monotonous plains,          and pallid fogs float over the marshes. O those          two cries: autumn, winter! winter, autumn! Do you          hear the dead wood falling in the forest?          No more is our garden the husband of light,          whence the phlox were seen springing towards          their glory; our fiery gladioli are mingled with          the earth, and have lain down in their length to          die.          Everything is nerveless and void of beauty;          everything is flameless and passes and flees and          bends and sinks down unsupported. Oh! give me          your eyes lit up by your soul that I may seek in          them in spite of all a corner of the old sky.          In them alone our light lives still, the light          that covered all the garden long ago, when it          exulted with the white pride of our lilies and          the climbing ardour of our hollyhocks.          When the fine snow with its sparkling grains          silts over our threshold, I hear your footsteps          wander and stop in the neighbouring room.          You withdraw the bright and fragile mirror from          its place by the window, and your bunch of          keys dances along the drawer of the beech-wood          wardrobe.          I listen, and you are poking the fire and          arousing the embers; and you are arranging about          the silent walls the silence of the chairs.          You remove the fleeting dust from the workbasket          with the narrow feet, and your ring strikes and          resounds on the quivering sides of a wine-glass.          And I am more happy than ever this evening at          your tender presence, and at feeling you near and          not seeing you and ever hearing you.          If fate has saved us from commonplace errors and          from vile untruth and from sorry shams, it is          because all constraint that might have bowed our          double fervour revolted us.          You went your way, free and frank and bright,          mingling with the flowers of love the flowers of          your will, and gently lifting up towards yourself          its lofty spirit when my brow was bent towards          fear or doubt.          And you were always kind and artless in your          acts, knowing that my heart was for ever yours;          for if I loved--do I now know?--some other woman,          it is to your heart that I always returned.          Your eyes were then so pure in their tears that          my being was stirred to sincerity and truth; and          I repeated to you holy and gentle words, and your          weapons were sadness and forgiveness.          And in the evening I lulled my head to sleep on          your bright bosom, happy at having returned from          false and dim distances to the fragrant spring          that bore sway in us, and I remained a captive in          your open arms.          No, my heart has never tired of you.          In the time of June, long ago, you said to me:          "If I knew, friend, if I knew that my presence          one day might be a burden to you-- with my poor          heart and sorrowful thoughts, I would go away, no          matter where."          And gently your forehead rose towards my kiss.          And you said to me again: "Bonds loosen always          and life is so full, and what matters if the          chain is golden that ties to the same ring in          port our two human barks!"          And gently your tears revealed to me your grief.          And you said and you said again: "Let us          separate, let us separate before the evil days;          our life has been too lofty to drag it trivially          from fault to fault."          And you fled and you fled, and my two hands          desperately held you back.          How happy we are still and proud of living when          the least ray of sunshine glimpsed in the heavens          lights up for a moment the poor flowers of rime          that the hard and delicate frost engraved on our          window-panes.          Rapture leaps in us and hope carries us away, and          our old garden appears to us again, in spite of          its long paths strewn with dead branches, living          and pure and bright and full of golden gleams.          Something shining and undaunted, I know not what,          creeps into our blood; and in the quick kisses          that, ardently, frantically, we give each other,          we re-embody the immensity and fulness of summer.          Shall we suffer, alas! the dead weight of the          years until at length we are no more than two          quiet people, exchanging the harmless kisses of          children at evening when the fire flames in the          hollow of the chimney?          Shall our dear furniture see us drag ourselves          with slow steps from the hearth to the beechen          chest, support ourselves by the wall to reach the          window, and huddle our tottering bodies on heavy          seats?          If our wreck is to appear one day in such guise,          while numbness deadens our brains and our arms,          we shall not bemoan, in spite of evil fate, and          we shall hold our tears pent up in our breasts.          For even so, we shall still keep our eyes with          which to gaze on the day that follows night, and          to see the dawn and the sun shed their radiance          on life, and make a wonderful object of the          earth.          The small happenings, the thousand nothings, a          letter, a date, a humble anniversary, a word said          once again as in days long ago uplift your heart          and mine in these long evenings.          And we celebrate for ourselves these simple          things, and we count and recount our old          treasures, so that the little of us that we still          keep may remain steadfast and brave before the          sullen hour.          And more than is fitting, we show ourselves          solicitous of these poor, gentle, kindly joys          that sit down on the bench near the flaming fire          with winter flowers on their thin knees.          And they take from the chest where their goodness          hides it the bright bread of happiness that was          allotted to us, and of which Love in our house          has so long eaten that he loves it even to the          crumbs.          Come even to our threshold, scattering your          white ash, O peaceful, slowly falling snow: the          lime-tree in the garden holds all its branches          bowed, and the light calandra dissolves in the          sky no longer.          O snow, who warm and protect the barely rising          corn with the moss and wool that you spread from          plain to plain! Silent snow, the gentle friend of          the houses asleep in the calm of morning:          Cover our roof and lightly touch our windows, and          suddenly enter by the door over the threshold          with your pure flakes and your dancing flames,          O snow, luminous through our soul, snow, who also          warm our last dreams like the rising corn!          When our bright garden was gay with all its          flowers, the regret at having shrunk our hearts          sprang from our lips in moments of passion; and          forgiveness, offered but deserved always, and          the exaggerated display of our wretchedness and          so many tears moistening our sad, sincere eyes          uplifted our love.          But in these months of heavy rain, when          everything huddles together and makes itself          small, when brightness itself tires of thrusting          back shadow and night, our soul is no longer          vibrant and strong enough to confess our faults          with rapture.          We tell them in slow speech; in truth, with          affection still, but at the fall of the evening          and no longer at dawn; sometimes even we count          them on our ten fingers like things that we          number and arrange in the house, and to lessen          their folly or their number we debate them.          With my old hands lifted to your forehead,          during your brief sleep by the black hearth this          evening, I part your hair, and I kiss the fervour          of your eyes hidden beneath your long lashes.          Oh! the sweet affection of this day's end! My          eyes follow the years that have completed their          course, and suddenly your life appears so perfect          in them that my love is moved by a touching          respect.          And as in the time when you were my betrothed,          the desire comes back to me again in all its          ardour to fall on my knees, and with fingers as          chaste as my thoughts to touch the place where          your gentle heart beats.          If our hearts have burned in uplifting days with          a love as bright as it was lofty, age now makes          us slack and indulgent and mild before our faults.          You no longer make us greater, O youthful will,          with your unsubdued ardour, and our life is          coloured now with gentle calm and pale kindliness.          We are at the setting of your sun, love, and we          mask our weakness with the common-place words and          poor speeches of an empty, tardy wisdom.          Oh! how sad and shameful would the future be for          us if from our winter and our mistiness there          did not break out like a torch the memory of the          high-spirited souls we once were.          In this rugged winter when the floating sun          founders on the horizon like a heavy wreck, I          love to say your name, with its slow, solemn          tone, as the clock echoes with the deep strokes          of time.          And the more I say it, the more ravished is my          voice, so much so that from my lips it descends          into my heart and awakens in me a more glowing          happiness than the sweetest words I have spoken          in my life.          And before the new dawn or the evening falling          to sleep, I repeat it with my voice that is ever          the same, but oh! with what strength and supreme          ardour shall I pronounce it at the hour of death!          Perhaps, when my last day comes, perhaps, if only          for a moment, a frail and quavering sun will          stoop down at my window.          My hands then, my poor faded hands, will even so          be gilded once again by his glory; he will touch          my mouth and my forehead a last time with his          slow, bright, deep kiss; and the pale, but still          proud flowers of my eyes will return his light          before they close.          Sun, have I not worshipped your strength and your          brightness! My torrid, gentle art, in its supreme          achievement has held you captive in the heart of          my poems; like a field of ripe wheat that surges          in the summer wind, this page and that of my          books confers life on you and exhalts you:          O Sun, who bring forth and deliver, O immense          friend of whom our pride has need, be it that at          the new, solemn and imperious hour when my old          human heart will be heavy under the proof, you          will come once more to visit it and witness.          Oh! how gentle are your hands and their slow          caress winding about my neck and gliding over my          body, when I tell you at the fall of evening how          my strength grows heavy day by day with the lead          of my weakness!          You do not wish me to become a shadow and a wreck          like those who go towards the darkness, even          though they carry a laurel in their mournful          hands and fame sleeping in their hollow chest.          Oh! how you soften the law of time for me, and          how comforting and generous to me is your dream;          for the first time, with an untruth you lull my          heart, that forgives you and thanks you for it,          Well knowing, nevertheless, that all ardour is          vain against all that is and all that must be,          and that, by finishing in your eyes my fine human          life, may perhaps be found a deep happiness.          When you have closed my eyes to the light, kiss          them with a long kiss, for they will have given          you in the last look of their last fervour the          utmost passionate love.          Beneath the still radiance of the funeral torch,          bend down towards the farewell in them your sad          and beautiful face, so that the only image they          will keep in the tomb may be imprinted on them          and may endure.          And let me feel, before the coffin is nailed up,          our hands meet once again on the pure, white bed,          and your cheek rest one last time against my          forehead on the pale cushions.          And let me afterwards go far away with my heart,          which will preserve so fiery a love for you that          the other dead will feel its glow even through          the compact, dead earth!               Between the little Here and larger Yonder,      There is a realm (or so one day I read)   Where faithful spirits love-enchained may wander,      Till some remembering soul from earth has fled.   Then, reunited, they go forth afar,   From sphere to sphere, where wondrous angels are.   Not many spirits in that realm are waiting;      Not many pause upon its shores to rest;   For only love, intense and unabating,      Can hold them from the longer, higher quest.   And after grief has wept itself to sleep,   Few hearts on earth their vital memories keep.   Should I pass on, across the mystic border,      Let thy love link me to that pallid land;   I would not seek the heavens of finer order      Until thy barque had left this coarser strand.   How desolate such journeyings would be,   Though straight to Him, were they not shared by thee.   Wert thou first called (dear God, how could I bear it?)      I should enchain thee with my love, I know.   Not great enough am I to free thy spirit      From all these tender ties, and bid thee go.   Nor would a soul, unselfish as thine own,   Forget so soon, and speed to heaven alone.   On earth we find no joy in ways diverging;      How could we find it in the worlds unseen?   I know old memories from my bosom surging,      Would keep thee waiting in that Land Between,   Until together, side by side, we trod   A path of stars, in our great search for God.’S    Midway upon the route, he paused athirst      And suddenly across the wastes of heat,      He saw cool waters gleaming, and a sweet   Green oasis upon his vision burst.   A tender dream, long in his bosom nursed,      Spread love’s illusive verdure for his feet;      The barren sands changed into golden wheat;   The way grew glad that late had seemed accursed.   She shone, the woman wonder, on his soul;      The garden spot, for which men toil and wait;         The house of rest, that is each heart’s demand;   But when, at last, he reached the gleaming goal,      He found, oh, cruel irony of fate,         But desert sun upon the desert sand.       I know the need of the world,      Though it would not have me know.   It would hide its sorrow deep,      Where only God may go.   Yet its secret it can not keep;   It tells it awake, or asleep,   It tells it to all who will heed,   And he who runs may read.      The need of the world I know.      When it boasts of its wealth the loudest,   When it flaunts it in all men’s eyes,      When its mien is the gayest and proudest.   Oh! ever it lies—it lies,   For the sound of its laughter dies   In a sob and a smothered moan,   And it weeps when it sits alone.   I know the need of the world.      When the earth shakes under the tread   Of men who march to the fight,      When rivers with blood are red   And there is no law but might,   And the wrong way seems the right;   When he who slaughters the most   Is all men’s pride and boast.      When it babbles of gold and fame,   It is only to lead us astray      From the thing that it dare not name,   For this is the sad world’s way.   Oh! poor blind world grown grey   With the need of a thing so near,   With the want of a thing so dear.   The need of the world is love.      Deep under the pride of power,   Down under its lust of greed,      For the joys that last but an hour,   There lies forever its need.   For love is the law and the creed   And love is the unnamed goal   Of life, from man to the mole.      Love is the need of the world.     Skilled mariner, and counted sane and wise,      That was a curious thing which chanced to me,         So good a sailor on so fair a sea.   With favouring winds and blue unshadowed skies,   Led by the faithful beacon of Love’s eyes,      Past reef and shoal, my life-boat bounded free      And fearless of all changes that might be   Under calm waves, where many a sunk rock lies.   A golden dawn; yet suddenly my barque      Strained at the sails, as in a cyclone’s blast;         And battled with an unseen current’s force,   For we had entered when the night was dark      That old tempestuous Gulf Stream of the Past.         But for love’s eyes, I had not kept the course.   His art was loving; Eres set his sign      Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew         The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew.   Love feeds love’s thirst as wine feeds love of wine;   Nor is there any potion from the vine      Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew      Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew   Inebriated with that draught divine.   Yet in his sober moments, when the sun      Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall,         And passion’s sea had grown an ebbing tide,   From out the many, Memory singled one      Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all—         _The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied_.         The world an abject vassal to her charms,   And kings competing for a single smile,   Yet love she knew not, till upon this isle   She gave surrender to abducting arms.   Not Theseus, who plucked her lips’ first kiss,      Not Menelaus, lawful mate and spouse,      Such answering passion in her heart could rouse,   Or wake such tumult in her soul as this.   Let come what will, let Greece and Asia meet,      Let heroes die and kingdoms run with gore;      Let devastation spread from shore to shore—   Resplendent Helen finds her bondage sweet.   The whole world fights her battles, while she lies   Sunned in the fervour of young Paris’ eyes.       The battles ended, ardent Paris dead,      Of faithful Menelaus long bereft,      Time is the only suitor who is left:   Helen survives, with youth and beauty fled.   By hate remembered, but by love forgot,      Dethroned and driven from her high estate,      Unhappy Helen feels the lash of Fate   And knows at last an unloved woman’s lot.   The Grecian marvel, and the Trojan joy,      The world’s fair wonder, from her palace flies      The furies follow, and great Helen dies,   A death of horror, for the pride of Troy.                                  * * * * *   Yet Time, like Menelaus, all forgives.   Helen, immortal in her beauty, lives.     Lais when young, and all her charms in flower,      Lais, whose beauty was the fateful light         That led great ships to anchor in the night   And bring their priceless cargoes to her bower,   Lais yet found her cup of sweet turned sour.      Great Plato’s pupil, from his lofty height,      Zenocrates, unmoved, had seen the white   Sweet wonder of her, and defied her power.   She snared the world in nets of subtle wiles:      The proud, the famed, all clamoured at her gate;         Dictators plead, inside her portico;   Wisdom sought madness, in her favouring smiles;      Now was she made the laughing-stock of fate:         One loosed her clinging arms, and bade her go.     Lais, when old and all her beauty gone,   Lais, the erstwhile courted pleasure queen,   Walked homeless through Corinth.      One mocked her mien—   One tossed her coins; she took them and passed on.   Down by the harbour sloped a terraced lawn,      Where fountains played; she paused to view the scene.      A marble palace stood in bowers of green   ’Twas here of old she revelled till the dawn.   Through yonder portico her lovers came—      Hero and statesman, athlete, merchant, sage;         They flung the whole world’s treasures at her feet   To buy her favour and exalt her shame.   She spat upon her dole of coins in rage      And faded like a phantom down the street.   You are here, and you are wanted,      Though a waif upon life’s stair;   Though the sunlit hours are haunted      With the shadowy shapes of care.   Still the Great One, the All-Seeing   Called your spirit into being—   Gave you strength for any fate.   Since your life by Him was needed,   All your ways by Him are heeded—      You can trust and you can wait.   You can wait to know the meaning      Of the troubles sent your soul;   Of the chasms intervening      ’Twixt your purpose and your goal;   Of the sorrows and the trials,   Of the silence and denials,      Ofttimes answering to your pleas;   Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,   And of pain’s too generous measure—      You can wait the _why_ of these.   Forth from planet unto planet,      You have gone, and you will go.   Space is vast, but we must span it;      For life’s purpose is _to know_.   Earth retains you but a minute,   Make the best of what lies in it;      Light the pathway where you are.   There is nothing worth the doing   That will leave regret or rueing,      As you speed from star to star.   You are part of the Beginning,      You are parcel of To-day.   When He set His world to spinning      You were flung upon your way.   When the system falls to pieces,   When this pulsing epoch ceases,      When the _is_ becomes the _was_,   You will live, for you will enter   In the great Creative Centre,      In the All-Enduring Cause.    Sailing away on a summer sea,      Out of the bleak March weather;   Drifting away for a loaf and play,      Just you and I together;   And it’s good-bye worry and good-bye hurry   And never a care have we;   With the sea below and the sun above   And nothing to do but dream and love,      Sailing away together.   Sailing away from the grim old town      And tasks the town calls duty;   Sailing away from walls of grey      To a land of bloom and beauty,   And it’s good-bye to letters from our lessers and our betters,   To the cold world’s smile or its frown.   We sail away on a sunny track   To find the summer and bring it back      And love is our only duty.   Afloat on a sea of passion      Without a compass or chart,   But the glow of your eye shows the sun is high,      By the sextant of my heart.   I know we are nearing the tropics      By the languor that round us lies,   And the smile on your mouth says the course is south      And the port is Paradise.   We have left grey skies behind us,      We sail under skies of blue;   You are off with me on lovers’ sea,      And I am away with you.   We have not a single sorrow,      And I have but one fear—   That my lips may miss one offered kiss      From the mouth that is smiling near.   There is no land of winter;      There is no world of care;   There is bloom and mirth all over the earth,      And love, love everywhere.   Our boat is the barque of Pleasure,      And whatever port we sight   The touch of your hand will make the land      The Harbour of Pure Delight.(     )   I wrenched from a passing comet in its flight,      By that great force of two mad hearts aflame,      A soul incarnate, back to earth you came,   To glow like star-dust for a little night.   Deep shadows hide you wholly from our sight;      The centuries leave nothing but your name,      Tinged with the lustre of a splendid shame,   That blazed oblivion with rebellious light.   The mighty passion that became your cause,      Still burns its lengthening path across the years;      We feel its raptures, and we see its tears   And ponder on its retributive laws.      Time keeps that deathless story ever new;      Yet finds no answer, when we ask of you.   At Argenteuil, I saw the lonely cell      Where Heloise dreamed through her broken rest,      That baby lips pulled at her undried breast.   It needed but my woman’s heart to tell   Of those long vigils and the tears that fell      When aching arms reached out in fruitless quest,      As after flight, wings brood an empty nest.   (So well I know that sorrow, ah, so well.)   Across the centuries there comes no sound      Of that vast anguish; not one sigh or word      Or echo of the mother loss has stirred,   The sea of silence, lasting and profound.      Yet to each heart, that once has felt this grief,      Sad Memory restores Time’s missing leaf.   But what of you?  Who took the mother’s place      When sweet expanding love its object sought?      Was there a voice to tell her tragic lot,   And did you ever look upon her face?   Was yours a cloistered seeking after grace?      Or in the flame of adolescent thought      Were Abelard’s departed passions caught   To burn again in you and leave their trace?   Conceived in nature’s bold primordial way      (As in their revolutions, suns create),      You came to earth, a soul immaculate,   Baptized in fire, with some great part to play.      What was that part, and wherefore hid from us,      Immortal mystery, Astrolabius!   When I shall meet God’s generous dispensers      Of all the riches in the heavenly store,   Those lesser gods, who act as Recompensers      For loneliness and loss upon this shore,   Methinks abashed, and somewhat hesitating,      My soul its wish and longing will declare.   Lest they reply: ‘Here are no bounties waiting:      We gave on earth, your portion and your share.’   Then shall I answer: ‘Yea, I do remember      The many blessings to my life allowed;   My June was always longer than December,      My sun was always stronger than my cloud,   My joy was ever deeper than my sorrow,      My gain was ever greater than my loss,   My yesterday seemed less than my to-morrow,      The crown looked always larger than the cross.   ‘I have known love, in all its radiant splendour,      It shone upon my pathway to the end.   I trod no road that did not bloom with tender      And fragrant blossoms, planted by some friend.   And those material things we call successes,      In modest measure, crowned my earthly lot.   Yet was there one sweet happiness that blesses      The life of woman, which to me came not.   ‘I knew the hope of motherhood; a season      I felt a fluttering heart beat ’neath my own;   A little cry—then silence.  For that reason      I dare, to you, my only wish make known.   The babe who grew to angelhood in heaven,      I never watched unfold from child to man.   And so I ask, that unto me be given      That motherhood, which was God’s primal plan.   ‘All womankind He meant to share its glories;      He meant us all to nurse our babes to rest.   To croon them songs, to tell them sleepy stories,      Else why the wonder of a woman’s breast?   He must provide for all earth’s cheated mothers      In His vast heavens of shining sphere on sphere,   And with my son, there must be many others—      My spirit children who will claim me here.   ‘Fair creatures by my loving thoughts created—      Too finely fashioned for a mortal birth—   Between the borders of two worlds they waited      Until they saw my spirit leave the earth.   In God’s great nursery they must be waiting      To welcome me with many an infant wile.   Now let me go and satisfy this longing      To mother children for a little while.’’S    As the grey twilight, tiptoed down the deep      And shadowy valley, to the day’s dark end,      She whom I thought my ever-faithful friend,   Fair-browed, calm-eyed and mother-bosomed Sleep,   Met me with smiles.  ‘Poor longing heart, I keep      Sweet joy for you,’ she murmured.  ‘I will send      One whom you love, with your own soul to blend   In visions, as the night hours onward creep.’   I trusted her; and watched by starry beams,      I slumbered soundly, free from all alarms.         Then not my love, but one long banished came,   Led by false Sleep, down secret stairs of dreams      And clasped me, unresisting in fond arms.         Oh, treacherous sleep—to sell me to such shame! __ [_A room in a private house_.  _A maiden sitting before a firemeditating_.]                                     Now have I fully fixed upon my part.   Good-bye to dreams; for me a life of art!   Beloved art!  Oh, realm serene and fair,   Above the mean and sordid world of care,   Above earth’s small ambitions and desires!   Art! art! the very word my soul inspires!   From foolish memories it sets me free.   Not what has been, but that which is to be   Absorbs me now.  Adieu to vain regret!   The bow is tensely drawn—the target set.                                                  [_A knock at the door_.]                               (_aside_)   The night is dark and chill; the hour is late.                                (_Aloud_)   Who knocks upon my door?                            _A Voice Outside_   ’Tis I, your fate!                                      Thou dost deceive, not me, but thine own self.   My fate is not a wandering, vagrant elf.   My fate is here, within this throbbing heart   That beats alone for glory, and for art.                                 _Voice_                        [_Another knock at door_.]   Pray, let me in; I am so faint and cold.[_Door is pushed ajar_.  _Enter_ , _who approaches the fire withoutstretched hands_.]                            (_indignantly_)   Methinks thou art not faint, however cold,   But rather too courageous, and most bold;   Surprisingly ill-mannered, sir, and rude,   Without an invitation to intrude   Into my very presence.                        (_warming his hands_)      But, you see,   Girls never mind a little chap like me.   They’re always watching for me on the sly,   And hoping I will call.                             (_haughtily_)      Indeed, not I!   My heart has listened to a sweeter voice,   A clarion call that gives command—not choice.   And I have answered to that call, ‘I come’;   To other voices shall my ears be dumb.   To art alone I consecrate my life—   Art is my spouse, and I his willing wife.                  (_slowly_, _gazing in the grate_)   Art is a sultan, and you must divide   His love with many another ill-fed bride.   Now I know one who worships you alone.                            (_impatiently_)   I will not listen! for the dice is thrown   And art has won me.  On my brow some day   Shall rest the laurel wreath—          (_sitting down and looking at_  _critically_)      Just let me say   I think sweet orange blossoms under lace   Are better suited to your type of face.                       (_ignoring interruption_)   I yet shall stand before an audience   That listens as one mind, absorbed, intense,   And with my genius I shall rouse its cheers,   Still it to silence, soften it to tears,   Or wake its laughter.  Oh, the play! the play!   The play’s the thing!  My boy, _the play_!!                   (_suddenly clapping his hands_)      Oh, say!   I know a splendid role for you to take,   And one that always keeps the house awake—   And calls for pretty dressing.  Oh, it’s great!                             (_excitedly_)   Well, well, what is it?  Wherefore make me wait?                 (_tapping his brow_, _thoughtfully_)   How is it those lines run—oh, now I know;   You make a stately entrance—measured—slow—   To stirring music, then you kneel and say   Something about—to honour and obey—   For better and for worse—till death do part.                              (_angrily_)   Be still, you foolish boy; that is not _art_.                            (_seriously_)   She needs great skill who takes the role of wife   In God’s stupendous drama human life.                     (_suddenly becoming serious_)   So I once thought!  Oh, once my very soul   Was filled and thrilled with dreaming of that role.   Life seemed so wonderful; it held for me   No purpose, no ambition, but to be   Loving and loved.  My highest thought of fame   Was some day bearing my dear lover’s name.   Alone, I ofttimes uttered it aloud,   Or wrote it down, half timid, and all proud   To see myself lost utterly in him:   As some small star might joy in growing dim   When sinking in the sun; or as the dew,   Forgetting the brief little life it knew   In space, might on the ocean’s bosom fall   And ask for nothing—only to give all.                              (_aside_)   Now, _that’s_ the talk—it’s music to my ear   After that stuff on ‘art’ and a ‘career.’   I hope she’ll keep it up.                     (_continuing her reverie_)      Again my dream   Shaped into changing pictures.  I would seem   To see myself in beautiful array   Move down the aisle upon my wedding day;   And then I saw the modest living-room   With lighted lamp, and fragrant plants in bloom,   And books and sewing scattered all about,   And just we two alone.                          (_in glee aside_)      There’s not a doubt   I’ll land her yet!      My dream kaleidoscope   Changed still again, and framed love’s dearest hope—   The trinity of home; and life was good   And all its deepest meaning understood.[_Sits lost in a dream_.  _Behind scenes a voice sings a lullaby_,‘_Beautiful Land of Nod_.’   _in ecstasy tiptoes about and claspshis hands in delight_.]   Another scene! a matron in her prime,   I saw myself glide peacefully with time   Into the quiet middle years, content   With simple joys the dear home circle lent.   My sons and daughters made my diadem;   I saw my happy youth renewed in them.   The pain of growing old lost all its sting,   For Love stood near—in Winter, as in Spring.[ _tiptoes to door and makes a signal_.   _starts updramatically_.]   ’Twas but a dream!  I woke all suddenly.   The world had changed!  And now life means to me   My art—the stage—excitement and the crowd—   The glare of many foot-lights—and the loud   Applause of men, as I cry in rage,   ‘Give me the dagger!’ or creep down the stage   In that sleep-walking scene.  Oh, art like mine   Will send the chills down every listener’s spine!   And when I choose, salt tears shall freely flow   As in the moonlight I cry, ‘Romeo!  Romeo!   Oh, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’            Ay, ’tis done   My dream of home life.                                              It is but begun.   The heart but once can dream a dream so fair,   And so henceforth love thoughts I do forswear;   Since faith in love has crumbled to the dust,   In fame alone, I put my hope and trust.[ _at the door beckons excitedly_.  _Enter lover with outstretchedarms_.]   Here’s one who will explain yourself to you   And make that old sweet dream of love come true.   Fix up your foolish quarrel; time is brief—   So waste no more of it in doubt or grief.[_The lovers meet and embrace_.]                            (_in doorway_)   Warm lip to lip, and heart to beating heart,   The cast is made—My Lady has her part.                                    (    )                                   Is this the way to greet thy loving spouse,   But now returned from scenes of blood and strife?   I pray thee raise thy veil and let me gaze   Upon that beauty which hath greater power   To conquer me than all the arts of war!                                     My beauty!  Ay, my _beauty_!  I do hold,   In thy regard, no more an honoured place   Than yonder marble pillar, or the gold   And jewelled wine-cup which thy lips caress.   Thou wouldst degrade me in the people’s sight!   Degrade thee, Vashti?  Rather do I seek   To show my people who are gathered here   How, as the consort of so fair a queen,   I feel more pride than as the mighty king:   For there be many rulers on the earth,   But only _one_ such queen.  Come, raise thy veil!   Ay! only _one_ such queen!  A queen is one   Who shares her husband’s greatness and his throne.   I am no more than yonder dancing girl   Who struts and smirks before a royal court!   But I will loose my veil and loose my tongue!   Now listen, sire—my master and my king;   And let thy princes and the court give ear!   ’Tis time all heard how Vashti feels her shame.   Shame is no word to couple with thy name!   Shame and a spotless woman may not meet,   Even in a sentence.  Choose another word.   Ay, _shame_, my lord—there is no synonym   That can give voice to my ignoble state.   To be a thing for eyes to gaze upon,   Yet held an outcast from thy heart and mind;   To hear my beauty praised but not my worth;   To come and go at Pleasure’s beck and call,   While barred from Wisdom’s conclaves!  Think ye _that_   A noble calling for a noble dame?   Why, any concubine amongst thy train   Could play my royal part as well as I—   Were she as fair!         Queen Vashti, art thou _mad_?   I would behead another did he dare   To so besmirch thee with comparison.                          (_to the court_)   Gaze now your fill!  Behold Queen Vashti’s eyes!   How large they gleam beneath her inch of brow!   How like a great white star, her splendid face   Shines through the midnight forest of her hair!   And see the crushed pomegranate of her mouth!   Observe her arms, her throat, her gleaming breasts,   Whereon the royal jewels rise and fall!—   And note the crescent curving of her hips,   And lovely limbs suggested ’neath her robes!   Gaze, gaze, I say, for these have made her queen!   She hath no mind, no heart, no dignity,   Worth royal recognition and regard;   But her fair body approbation meets   And whets the sated appetite of kings!   Now ye have seen what she was bid to show.   The queen hath played her part and begs to go.   Ay, Vashti, go and never more return!   Not only hast thou wronged thine own true lord,   And mocked and shamed me in the people’s eyes,   But thou hast wronged all princes and all men   By thy pernicious and rebellious ways.   Queens act and subjects imitate.  So let   Queen Vashti weigh her conduct and her words,   Or be no more called ‘queen!’   I was a princess ere I was a queen,   And worthy of a better fate than this!   There lies the crown that made me queen in name!   Here stands the woman—wife in name alone!   Now, no more queen—nor wife—but woman still—   Ay, and a woman strong enough to be   Her own avenger.      Tell me thy name!                                     My name, great sire, is Esther.   So thou art Esther?  Esther! ’tis a name   Breathed into sound as softly as a sigh.   A woman’s name should melt upon the lips   Like Love’s first kisses, and thy countenance   Is fit companion for so sweet a name!   Thou art most kind.  I would my name and face   Were mine own making and not accident.   Then I might feel elated at thy praise,   Where now I feel confusion.         Thou hast wit   As well as beauty, Esther.  Both are gems   That do embellish woman in man’s sight.   Yet they are gems of second magnitude!   Dost _thou_ possess the one great perfect gem—   The matchless jewel of the world called _love_?   Sire, in the heart of every woman dwells   That wondrous perfect gem!         Then, Esther, speak!   And tell me what is _love_!  I fain would know   Thy definition of that much-mouthed word,   By woman most employed—least understood.   What can a humble Jewish maiden know   That would instruct a warrior and a king?   I have but dreamed of love as maidens will   While thou hast known its fulness.  All the world   Loves Great Ahasueras!         All the world   _Fears great_ Ahasueras!  Kings, my child,   Are rarely loved as anything but kings.   Love, as I see it in the court and camp,   Means seeking royal favour.  I would know   How love is fashioned in a maiden’s dreams.   Sire, love seeks nothing that kings can bestow.   Love is the king of all kings here below;   Love makes the monarch but a bashful boy,   Love makes the peasant monarch in his joy;   Love seeks not place, all places are the same,   When lighted by the radiance of love’s flame.   Who deems proud love could fawn to power and splendour   Hath known not love, but some base-born pretender.   If this be love, I would know more of it.   Speak on, fair Esther!  What is love beside?   Love is in all things, all things are in love.   Love is the earth, the sea, the skies above;   Love is the bird, the blossom, and the wind;   Love hath a million eyes, yet love is blind;   Love is a tempest, awful in its might;   Love is the silence of a moon-lit night;   Love is the aim of every human soul;   And he who hath not loved hath missed life’s goal!   But tell me of thyself, of thine own dreams!   How wouldst thou love, and how be loved again?   Who most doth love thinks least of love’s return;   She is content to feel the passion burn   In her own bosom, and its sacred fire   Consumes each selfish purpose and desire.   ’Tis in the giving, love’s best rapture lies,   Not in the counting of the things it buys.   Yet, is there not vast anguish and despair   In love that finds no answering word or smile?   So radiant is love, it lends a glow   To each dark sorrow and to every woe.   To love completely is to part with pain,   Nor is there mortal who can love in vain.   Love is its own reward, it pays full measure,   And in love’s sharpest grief lies subtlest pleasure.   Methinks, a mighty warrior, lord or king   Must in thy fancy play the lover’s part;   None else could wake such reverential thought.   When woman loves one born of lowly state,   Her thought gives crown and sceptre to her mate;   Yet be he king, or chief of some great clan,   She loves him but as woman loves a man.   Monarch or peasant, ’tis the same, I wis   When once she gives him love’s surrendering kiss.    What were thy thoughts, sweet Esther?  Something passed   Across thy face, that for a moment veiled   Thy soul from mine, and left me desolate.   Thy thoughts were not of me?         Ay, _all_ of thee!   I wondered, if in truth, thou wert content   With me—thy choice.  Was there no other one   Of all who passed before thee at thy court   Whose memory pursues thee with regret?   I do confess I much regret that day   And wish I could relive it.         Oh!  My lord!   Yea!  I regret those hours I wasted on   The poor procession that preceded thee.   Hadst thou come first, then all the added wealth      Of one long day of loving thee were mine—   A boundless fortune squandered.  Though I live   To three score years and ten, as I do hope,   In wedded love beside thee, that one day   Was filched from me and cannot be restored.   And then to think how frightened and abashed   I hung outside thy gates from early morn,   Not daring to go in and meet thine eyes,   Till pitying twilight clothed me in her veil,   And evening walked beside me to thy door.   So it was thou, fair thief, who stole that day,   And made me poorer, by—how many hours?   Full eight, I think.  They seemed a hundred then,   And now time flies a hundred times too fast.   Then eight more kisses do I claim from thee,   This very hour—first tithes of many due.   I shall exact these payments as I will,   And if they be not ready on demand,   I’ll lock thee in the prison of my arms,   Like this—and take them so—and so—and so!   But kings must think of other things than love   And live for other aims than happiness.   I would not drag thee from thy altitude   Of mighty ruler and great conqueror   To chain thee by my side.         Such slavery   Would please me better than to conquer earth   Without thee, Esther.  I have stood on heights   And heard the cheers of multitudes below;   Have known the loneliness of being great.   Now, let me live and love thee, like a man,   Forgetting I am king—   I am content.   Content is not the pathway to great deeds.   As man, I hold thee higher than all kings;   As king, thou must stand higher than all men   In other eyes.  Let no one say of me:   ‘She spoiled his greatness by her littleness;   She made a languorous lover of a king,   And silenced war-cries on commanding lips—   With honeyed kisses; made her woman’s arms   Preferred to armour, and her couch to tents,   Until the kingdom, with no guiding hand,   Plunged down to ruin.’         Thou wouldst have me go—   So soon thy heart hath wearied?   My heart is bursting with its love for thee!   Canst thou not feel its fervour?  But great men   Need wiser guidance than a woman’s heart.   My pride in thee is equal to my love,   And I would have thee greater than thou art—   Ay, greater than all other men on earth—   Though forced long years to feed my hungry heart   On food of memories and wine of tears,   Wert thou but winning glory and renown.   Thou art most noble, Esther; thou art fit   To be the consort of a king of kings.   But I have chewed upon ambition’s husks   And starved for love through all my manhood’s years;   And now the mighty gods have seen it fit   To spread love’s banquet and to name thee host,   May I not feast my fill?  O Esther, take   The tempting nectar of those lips away   And give me wine to rouse the brute in me,   To make me thirst for blood instead of love!   Wine!  Wine!  I say!         Ahasueras, wait!   Methinks good music is wine turned to sound.   Here comes thy minstrel with an offering   Pressed from the ripened fruit of my fond heart.   Mine own the words and mine the melody   And may it linger longer in thine ear   Than on thy lip would stay the taste of wine.   Sing on!                                    When from the field returning,   Love is a warrior’s yearning,   Love in his heart is burning,      Love is his dream.   Talk not to him of glory,   Speak not of faces gory,   Sing of love’s tender story,      Make it thy theme.   Sing of his lady’s tresses,   Sing of the smile that blesses,   Sing of the sweet caresses,      And yet again   Sing of fair children’s faces,   Sing of the dear home graces,   Sing till the vacant places,      Ring with thy strain.   Yet as the days go speeding,   Shall he arise unheeding   Love songs or words of pleading,      Strong in his might!   Helmet and armour wearing,   Hies he to deeds of daring,   Forth to the battle faring,      Back to the fight.   Sing now of ranks contending,   Sing of loud voices blending,   Sing of great warriors sending      Death to their foes!   Sing of war missiles humming,   Strike into martial drumming,   Sing of great victory coming,      As forth he goes.   Back to the battle faring,   Back into deeds of daring,   No less a lover but a greater man,   A better warrior and a nobler king,   I will be from this hour for thy dear sake.    God finished woman in the twilight hour   And said, ‘To-morrow thou shalt find thy place:   Man’s complement, the mother of the race—      With love the motive power—      The one compelling power.’   All night she dreamed and wondered.  With the light   Her lover came—and then she understood   The purpose of her being.  Life was good      And all the world seemed right—      And nothing was, but right.   She had no wish for any wider sway:   By all the questions of the world unvexed,   Supremely loving and superbly sexed,      She passed upon her way—      Her feminine fair way.   But God neglected, when He fashioned man,   To fuse the molten splendour of his mind   With that sixth sense He gave to womankind.      And so He marred His plan—      Ay, marred His own great plan.   She asked so little, and so much she gave,   That man grew selfish: and she soon became,   To God’s great sorrow and the whole world’s shame,      Man’s sweet and patient slave—      His uncomplaining slave.   Yet in the nights (oh! nights so dark and long)   She clasped her little children to her breast   And wept.  And in her anguish of unrest      She thought upon her wrong;      She knew how great her wrong.   And one sad hour, she said unto her heart,   ‘Since thou art cause of all my bitter pain,   I bid thee abdicate the throne: let brain      Rule now, and do his part—      His masterful, strong part.’   She wept no more.  By new ambition stirred   Her ways led out, to regions strange and vast.   Men stood aside and watched, dismayed, aghast,      And all the world demurred—      Misjudged her, and demurred.   Still on and up, from sphere to widening sphere,   Till thorny paths bloomed with the rose of fame.   Who once demurred, now followed with acclaim:      The hiss died in the cheer—      The loud applauding cheer.   She stood triumphant in that radiant hour,   Man’s mental equal, and competitor.   But ah! the cost! from out the heart of her      Had gone love’s motive power—      Love’s all-compelling power.    I dreamed a Voice, of one God-authorised,   Cried loudly thro’ the world, ‘Disarm!  Disarm!’   And there was consternation in the camps;   And men who strutted under braid and lace   Beat on their medalled breasts, and wailed, ‘Undone!’   The word was echoed from a thousand hills,   And shop and mill, and factory and forge,   Where throve the awful industries of death,   Hushed into silence.  Scrawled upon the doors,   The passer read, ‘Peace bids her children starve.’   But foolish women clasped their little sons   And wept for joy, not reasoning like men.   Again the Voice commanded: ‘Now go forth   And build a world for Progress and for Peace.   This work has waited since the earth was shaped;   But men were fighting, and they could not toil.   The needs of life outnumber needs of death.   Leave death with God.  Go forth, I say, and build.’   And then a sudden, comprehensive joy   Shone in the eyes of men; and one who thought   Only of conquests and of victories   Woke from his gloomy reverie and cried,   ‘Ay, come and build!  I challenge all to try.   And I will make a world more beautiful   Than Eden was before the serpent came.’   And like a running flame on western wilds,   Ambition spread from mind to listening mind,   And lo! the looms were busy once again,   And all the earth resounded with men’s toil.   Vast palaces of Science graced the world;   Their banquet tables spread with feasts of truth   For all who hungered.  Music kissed the air,   Once rent with boom of cannons.  Statues gleamed   From wooded ways, where ambushed armies hid   In times of old.  The sea and air were gay   With shining sails that soared from land to land.   A universal language of the world   Made nations kin, and poverty was known   But as a word marked ‘obsolete,’ like war.   The arts were kindled with celestial fire;   New poets sang so Homer’s fame grew dim;   And brush and chisel gave the wondering race   Sublimer treasures than old Greece displayed.   Men differed still; fierce argument arose,   For men are human in this human sphere;   But unarmed Arbitration stood between   And Reason settled in a hundred hours   What War disputed for a hundred years.   Oh, that a Voice, of one God-authorised   Might cry to all mankind, Disarm!  Disarm!’S    Once in a time of trouble and of care   I dreamed I talked with God about my pain;   With sleepland courage, daring to complain   Of what I deemed ungracious and unfair.   ‘Lord, I have grovelled on my knees in prayer      Hour after hour,’ I cried; ‘yet all in vain;      No hand leads up to heights I would attain,   No path is shown me out of my despair.’   Then answered God: ‘Three things I gave to thee—      Clear brain, brave will, and strength of mind and heart,         All implements divine, to shape the way.   Why shift the burden of thy toil on Me?      Till to the utmost he has done his part         With all his might, let no man _dare_ to pray.’       Two thousand years had passed since Christ was born,   When suddenly there rose a mighty host   Of women, sweeping to a central goal   As many rivers sweep on to the sea.   They came from mountains, valleys, and from coasts,   And from all lands, all nations, and all ranks,   Speaking all languages, but thinking one.   And that one language—Peace.         ‘Listen,’ they said,   And straightway was there silence on the earth,   For men were dumb with wonder and surprise.   ‘Listen, O mighty masters of the world,   And hear the edict of all womankind:   Since Christ His new commandment gave to men,   _Love one another_, full two thousand years   Have passed away, yet earth is red with blood.   The strong male rulers of the world proclaim   Their weakness, when we ask that war shall cease.   Now will the poor weak women of the world   Proclaim their strength, and say that war shall end.   Hear, then, our edict: Never from this day   Will any woman on the crust of earth   Mother a warrior.  We have sworn the oath   And will go barren to the waiting tomb   Rather than breed strong sons at war’s behest,   Or bring fair daughters into life, to bear   The pains of travail, for no end but war.   Ay! let the race die out for lack of babes   Better a dying race than endless wars!   Better a silent world than noise of guns   And clash of armies.         ‘Long we asked for peace,   And oft you promised—but to fight again.   At last you told us, war must ever be   While men existed, laughing at our plea   For the disarmament of all mankind.   Then in our hearts flamed such a mad desire   For peace on earth, as lights the world at times   With some great conflagration; and it spread   From distant land to land, from sea to sea,   Until all women thought as with one mind   And spoke as with one voice; and now behold!   The great Crusading Syndicate of Peace,   Filling all space with one supreme resolve.   Give us, O men, your word that war shall end:   Disarm the world, and we will give you sons—   Sons to construct, and daughters to adorn   A beautiful new earth, where there shall be   Fewer and finer people, opulence   And opportunity and peace for all.   Until you promise peace no shrill birth-cry   Shall sound again upon the aging earth.   We wait your answer.’         And the world was still   While men considered. -   At times I am the mother of the world;   And mine seem all its sorrows, and its fears.   That rose, which in each mother-heart is curled,      The rose of pity, opens with my tears,   And, waking in the night, I lie and hark      To the lone sobbing, and the wild alarms,   Of my World-child, a wailing in the dark:      The child I fain would shelter in my arms.   I call to it (as from another room      A mother calls, what time she cannot go):   ‘Sleep well, dear world; Love hides behind this gloom.      There is no need for wakefulness or woe,   The long, long night is almost past and gone,   The day is near.’  And yet the world weeps on.   Again I follow it, throughout the day.      With anxious eyes I see it trip and fall,   And hurt itself in many a foolish way:      Childlike, unheeding warning word or call.   I see it grasp, and grasping, break the toys      It cried to own, then toss them on the floor   And, breathless, hurry after fancied joys      That cease to please, when added to its store.   I see the lacerations on its hands,      Made by forbidden tools; but when it weeps,   I also weep, as one who understands;      And having been a child, the memory keeps.   Ah, my poor world, however wrong thy part,   Still is there pity in my mother-heart.    I cried, ‘Dear Angel, lead me to the heights,      And spur me to the top.’      The Angel answered, ‘Stop   And set thy house in order; make it fair   For absent ones who may be speeding there.      Then will we talk of heights.’   I put my house in order.  ‘Now lead on!’      The Angel said, ‘Not yet;      Thy garden is beset   By thorns and tares; go weed it, so all those   Who come to gaze may find the unvexed rose;      Then will we journey on.’   I weeded well my garden.  ‘All is done.’      The Angel shook his head.      ‘A beggar stands,’ he said,   ‘Outside thy gates; till thou hast given heed   And soothed his sorrow, and supplied his need,      Say not that all is done.’   The beggar left me singing.  ‘Now at last—      At last the path is clear.’      ‘Nay, there is one draws near   Who seeks, like thee, the difficult highway.   He lacks thy courage; cheer him through the day      Then will we cry, “At last!”’   I helped my weaker brother.  ‘Now the heights;      Oh, Guide me, Angel, guide!’      The Presence at my side,   With radiant face, said, ‘Look, where are we now?’   And lo! we stood upon the mountain’s brow—      The heights, the shining heights!  ‘   ’     Not great Vesuvius, in all his ire,   Nor all the centuries, could hide your shame.   There is the little window where you came,   With eyes that woke the demon of desire,   And lips like rose leaves, fashioned out of fire;      And from the lava leaps the molten flame      Of your old sins.  The walls cry out your name—   Your face seems rising from the funeral pyre.   There must have dwelt, within your fated town,      Full many a virtuous dame, and noble wife         Who made your beauty seem as star to sun;   How strange the centuries have handed down      Your name, fair Julia, of immoral life,         And left the others to oblivion.A    Master of sweet and loving lore,      Give us the open mind   To know religion means no more,      No less, than being kind.   Give us the comprehensive sight      That sees another’s need;   And let our aim to set things right      Prove God inspired our creed.   Give us the soul to know our kin      That dwell in flock and herd,   The voice to fight man’s shameful sin      Against the beast and bird.   Give us a heart with love so fraught      For all created things,   That even our unspoken thought      Bears healing on its wings.   Give us religion that will cope      With life’s colossal woes,   And turn a radiant face of hope      On troops of pigmy foes.   Give us the mastery of our fate      In thoughts so warm and white,   They stamp upon the brows of hate      Love’s glorious seal of light.   Give us the strong, courageous faith      That makes of pain a friend,   And calls the secret word of death      ‘Beginning,’ and not ‘end.’   ?   What is right living?  Just to do your best   When worst seems easier.  To bear the ills   Of daily life with patient cheerfulness   Nor waste dear time recounting them.         To talk   Of hopeful things when doubt is in the air.   To count your blessings often, giving thanks,   And to accept your sorrows silently,   Nor question why you suffer.  To accept   The whole of life as one perfected plan,   And welcome each event as part of it.   To work, and love your work; to trust, to pray   For larger usefulness and clearer sight.   This is right living, pleasing in God’s eyes,   Though you be heathen, heretic or Jew.   However inexplicable may seem      Event and circumstance upon this earth,   Though favours fall on those whom none esteem,      And insult and indifference greet worth;   Though poverty repays the life of toil,      And riches spring where idle feet have trod,   And storms lay waste the patiently tilled soil—      Yet Justice sways the universe of God.   As undisturbed the stately stars remain      Beyond the glare of day’s obscuring light,   So Justice dwells, though mortal eyes in vain      Seek it persistently by reason’s sight.   But when, once freed, the illumined soul looks out.   Its cry will be, ‘O God, how could I doubt!’’S    Time looked me in the eyes while passing by   The milestone of the year.  That piercing gaze   Was both an accusation and reproach.   No speech was needed.  In a sorrowing look   More meaning lies than in complaining words,   And silence hurts as keenly as reproof.   Oh, opulent, kind giver of rich hours,   How have I used thy benefits!  As babes   Unstring a necklace, laughing at the sound   Of priceless jewels dropping one by one,   So have I laughed while precious moments rolled   Into the hidden corners of the past.   And I have let large opportunities   For high endeavour move unheeded by,   While little joys and cares absorbed my strength.   And yet, dear Time, set to my credit this:   _Not one white hour have I made black with hate_,   _Nor wished one living creature aught but good_.   Be patient with me.  Though the sun slants west,   The day has not yet finished, and I feel   Necessity for action and resolve   Bear in upon my consciousness.  I know   The earth’s eternal need of earnest souls,   And the great hunger of the world for Love.   I know the goal to high achievement lies   Through the dull pathway of self-conquest first;   And on the stairs of little duties done   We climb to joys that stand thy test.  O Time,   Be patient with me, and another day,   Perchance, in passing by, thine eyes may smile.       In what I do I note the marring flaw,   The imperfections of the work I see;   Nor am I one who rather _do_ than _be_,   Since its reversal is Creation’s law.   Nay, since there lies a better and a worse,   A lesser and a larger, in men’s view,   I would be better than the thing I do,   As God is greater than His universe.   He shaped Himself before He shaped one world:   A million eons, toiling day and night,   He built Himself to majesty and might,   Before the planets into space were hurled.   And when Creation’s early work was done,   What crude beginnings out of chaos came—   A formless nebula, a wavering flame,   An errant comet, a voracious sun.   And, still unable to perfect His plan,   What awful creatures at His touch found birth—   Those protoplasmic monsters of the earth,   That owned the world before He fashioned Man.   And now, behold the poor unfinished state   Of this, His latest masterpiece!  Then why,   Seeing the flaws in my own work, should I   Be troubled that no voice proclaims it great?   Before me lie the cycling rounds of years;   With this small earth will die the thing I do:   The thing I am, goes journeying onward through   A million lives, upon a million spheres.   My work I build, as best I can and may,   Knowing all mortal effort ends in dust.   I build myself, not as I may, but must,   Knowing, or good, or ill, that self must stay.   Along the ages, out, and on, afar,   Its journey leads, and must perforce be made.   Likewise its choice, with things of shame and shade,   Or up the path of light, from star to star.   When all these solar systems shall disperse,   Perchance this labour, and this self-control,   May find reward; and my completed soul   Will fling in space, a little universe.  ?   Art thou alive?  Nay, not too soon reply,   Tho’ hand, and foot, and lip, and ear, and eye,   Respond, and do thy bidding yet may be   Grim death has done his direst work with thee.   Life, as God gives it, is a thing apart   From active body and from beating heart.   It is the vital spark, the unseen fire,   That moves the mind to reason and aspire;   It is the force that bids emotion roll,   In mighty billows from the surging soul.   It is the light that grows from hour to hour,   And floods the brain with consciousness of power;   It is the spirit dominating all,   And reaching God with its imperious call,   Until the shining glory of His face   Illuminates each sorrowful, dark place;   It is the truth that sets the bondsman free,   Knowing he will be what he wills to be.   With its unburied dead the earth is sad.   Art thou alive? proclaim it and be glad.   Perchance the dead may hear thee and arise,   Knowing they live, and _here_ is Paradise.-   I love this age of energy and force,      Expectantly I greet each pregnant hour;   Emerging from the all-creative source,      Supreme with promise, imminent with power.   The strident whistle and the clanging bell,      The noise of gongs, the rush of motored things   Are but the prophet voices which foretell      A time when thought may use unfettered wings.   Too long the drudgery of earth has been      A barrier ’twixt man and his own mind.   Remove the stone, and lo! the Christ within;      For He is there, and who so seeks shall find.   The Great Inventor is the Modern Priest.      He paves the pathway to a higher goal.   Once from the grind of endless toil released      Man will explore the kingdom of his soul.   And all this restless rush, this strain and strife,      This noise and glare is but the fanfarade   That ushers in the more majestic life      Where faith shall walk with science, unafraid.   I feel the strong vibrations of the earth,      I sense the coming of an hour sublime,   And bless the star that watched above my birth      And let me live in this important time.    Unto each mortal who comes to earth   A ladder is given by God, at birth,   And up this ladder the soul must go,   Step by step, from the valley below;   Step by step, to the centre of space,   On this ladder of lives, to the Starting Place.   In time departed (which yet endures)   I shaped my ladder, and you shaped yours.   Whatever they are—they are what we made:   A ladder of light, or a ladder of shade,   A ladder of love, or a hateful thing,   A ladder of strength, or a wavering string.   A ladder of gold, or a ladder of straw,   Each is the ladder of righteous law.   We flung them away at the call of death,   We took them again with the next life breath.   For a keeper stands by the great birth gates;   As each soul passes, its ladder waits.   Though mine be narrow, and yours be broad,   On my ladder alone can I climb to God.   On your ladder alone can your feet ascend,   For none may borrow, and none may lend.   If toil and trouble and pain are found,   Twisted and corded, to form each round,   If rusted iron or mouldering wood   Is the fragile frame, you must make it good.   You must build it over and fashion it strong,   Though the task be hard as your life is long;   For up this ladder the pathway leads   To earthly pleasures and spirit needs;   And all that may come in another way   Shall be but illusion, and will not stay.   In useless effort, then, waste no time;   Rebuild your ladder, and climb and climb.  A ?   Who is a Christian in this Christian land   Of many churches and of lofty spires?   Not he who sits in soft upholstered pews   Bought by the profits of unholy greed,   And looks devotion, while he thinks of gain.   Not he who sends petitions from the lips   That lie to-morrow in the street and mart.   Not he who fattens on another’s toil,   And flings his unearned riches to the poor,   Or aids the heathen with a lessened wage,   And builds cathedrals with an increased rent.   Christ, with Thy great, sweet, simple creed of love,   How must Thou weary of Earth’s ‘Christian’ clans,   Who preach salvation through Thy saving blood   While planning slaughter of their fellow men.   Who is a Christian?  It is one whose life   Is built on love, on kindness and on faith;   Who holds his brother as his other self;   Who toils for justice, equity and ,   And hides no aim or purpose in his heart   That will not chord with universal good.   Though he be pagan, heretic or Jew,   That man is Christian and beloved of Christ.    All your wonderful inventions,      All your houses vast and tall,   All your great gun-fronted vessels,      Every fort and every wall,   With the passing of the ages,      They shall pass and they shall fall.   As you sit among the idols      That your avarice gave birth,   As you count the hoarded treasures      That you think of priceless worth,   Time is digging tombs to hide them      In the bosom of the earth.   There shall come a great convulsion      Or a rushing tidal wave,   Or a sound of mighty thunders      From a subterranean cave,   And a boasting world’s possessions      Shall be buried in one grave.   From the Centuries of Silence      We are bringing back again   Buried vase and bust and column      And the gods they worshipped then,   In the strange unmentioned cities      Built by prehistoric men.   Did they steal, and lie, and slaughter?      Did they steep their souls in shame?   Did they sell eternal virtues      Just to win a passing fame?   Did they give the gold of honour      For the tinsel of a name?   We are hurrying all together      Toward the silence and the night;   There is nothing worth the seeking      But the sun-kissed moral height—      But the doing of the _right_.    I asked the rock beside the road what joy existence lent.   It answered, ‘For a million years my heart has been content.’   I asked the truffle-seeking swine, as rooting by he went,   ‘What is the keynote of your life?’  He grunted out, ‘Content.’   I asked a slave, who toiled and sung, just what his singing meant.   He plodded on his changeless way, and said, ‘I am content.’   I asked a plutocrat of greed, on what his thoughts were bent.   He chinked the silver in his purse, and said, ‘I am content.’   I asked the mighty forest tree from whence its force was sent.   Its thousand branches spoke as one, and said, ‘From discontent.’   I asked the message speeding on, by what great law was rent   God’s secret from the waves of space.  It said, ‘From discontent.’   I asked the marble, where the works of God and man were blent,   What brought the statue from the block.  It answered, ‘Discontent.’   I asked an Angel, looking down on earth with gaze intent,   How man should rise to larger growth.  Quoth he, ‘Through discontent.’!   Slowly the People waken; they have been,   Like weary soldiers, sleeping in their tents,   While traitors tiptoed through the silent camp   Intent on plunder.  Suddenly a sound—   A careless movement of too bold a thief—   Starts one dull sleeper; then another stirs,   A third cries out a warning, and at last   The people are awake!  Oh, when as one   The many rise, united and alert,   With Justice for their motto, they reflect   The mighty force of God’s Omnipotence.   And nothing stands before them.  Lusty Greed,   Tyrannical Corruption long in power,   And smirking Cant (whose right hand robs and slays   So that the left may dower Church and School),   Monopoly, whose mandate took from Toil   The Mother Earth, that Idleness might loll   And breed the Monster of Colossal Wealth—   All these must fall before the gathering Force   Of public indignation.  That old strife   Which marks the progress of each century,   The war of Right with Might, is on once more,   And shame to him who does not take his stand.   This is the weightiest moment of all time,   And on the issues of the present hour   A nation’s honour and a country’s peace,   A People’s future, ay, a World’s, depends.   Until the vital questions of the day   Are solved and settled, and the spendthrift thieves   Who rob the coffers of the saving poor   Are led from fashion’s feasts to prison fare,   And taught the saving grace of honest work—   Till Labour claims the privilege of toil   And toil the proceeds of its labour shares—   Let no man sleep, let no man dare to sleep!   I am sorry in the gladness      Of the joys that crown my days,   For the souls that sit in sadness      Or walk uninviting ways.   On the radiance of my labour      That a loving fate bestowed,   Falls the shadow of my neighbour,      Crushed beneath a thankless load.   As the canticle of pleasure      From my lovelit altar rolls,   There is one discordant measure,      As I think of homeless souls.   And I know that grim old story,      Preached from pulpits, is not so,   For no God could sit in glory      And see sinners writhe below.   In that great eternal Centre      Where all human life has birth,   Boundless love and pity enter      And flow downward to the earth.   And all souls in sin or sorrow      Are but passing through the night,   And I know on some to-morrow      God will love them into light.      ‘_Let go the Cross_’— .   I heard a strange voice in the distance calling   As from a star an echo might be falling.   It spoke four syllables, concise and brief,   Charged with a God-sent message of relief:   _Let go the cross_!  Oh, you who cling to sorrow,   Hark to the new command and comfort borrow.   Even as the Master left His cross below   And rose to Paradise, let go, let go.   Forget your wrongs, your troubles and your losses,   For with the tools of thought we build our crosses.   Forget your griefs, all grudges and all fear   And enter Paradise—its gates are near.   Heaven is a realm by loving souls created,   And hell was fashioned by the hearts that hated.   Love, hope and trust; believe all joys are yours,   Life pays the soul whose confidence endures,   The blows of adverse fate, by larger pleasures,   As after storms the soil yields fuller measures.   Let go the cross; roll self—the stone—away   And dwell with Love in Paradise to-day.    When the Summer sun is shining,      And the green things push and grow,   Oft my heart runs over measure,   With its flowing fount of pleasure,      As I feel the sea winds blow;      Ah, then life is good, I know.   And I think of sweet birds building,      And of children fair and free;   And of glowing sun-kissed meadows,   And of tender twilight shadows,      And of boats upon the sea.      Oh, then life seems good to me!   Then unbidden and unwanted,      Come the darker, sadder sights;   City shop and stifling alley,   Where misfortune’s children rally;      And the hot crime-breeding nights,      And the dearth of God’s delights.   And I think of narrow prisons      Where unhappy songbirds dwell,   And of cruel pens and cages   Where some captured wild thing rages      Like a madman in his cell,      In the Zoo, the wild beasts’ hell.   And I long to lift the burden      Of man’s selfishness and sin;   And to open wide earth’s treasures   Of God’s storehouse, full of pleasures,      For my dumb and human kin,      And to ask the whole world in.      Between the ringing of bells and the musical clang of chimes   I hear a sound like the breaking of chains, all through these   Christmas times.   For the thought of the world is waking out of a slumber deep and long,   And the race is beginning to understand how Right can master Wrong.   And the eyes of the world are opening wide, and great are the truths   they see;   And the heart of the world is singing a song, and its burden is ‘Be   free!’   Now the thought of the world and the wish of the world and the song of   the world will make   A force so strong that the fetters forged for a million years must   break.   Fetters of superstitious fear have bound the race to creeds   That hindered the upward march of man to the larger faith he needs.   Fetters of greed and pride have made the race bow down to kings;   But the pompous creed and the costly throne must yield to simpler   things.   The thought of the world has climbed above old paths for centuries   trod;   And cloth and crown no longer mean the ‘vested power of God.’   The race no longer bends beneath the weight of Adam’s sin,   But stands erect and knows itself the Maker’s first of kin.   And the need of the world and the wish of the world and the song of   the world I hear,   All through the clanging and clashing of bells, this Christmas time o’   the year;   And I hear a sound like the breaking of chains, and it seems to say to   me,   In the voice of One who spoke of old, ‘The Truth shall make men free.’   Upon December’s windy portico   The Old Year stood, and looked out where the sun   Went wading down the West, through drifting clouds.   ‘I, too, shall sink full soon to rest,’ he sighed,   ‘And follow where my children’s feet have trod;   Brave January, beauteous May and June,   My lovely daughters, and my valiant sons,   All, all save one, have left me for that bourne   Men call the Past.  It seems but yesterday   I saw fair August, laughing with the Sea,   Snaring the Earth with her seductive wiles,   And making conquest, even of the Sun.   Yet has she gone, and left me here to mourn.’   Then spake December, from an open door:   ‘Father, the night grows cold; come in and rest.   Sit with me here beside this glowing grate;   I have not left thee; thou art not alone;   My house is thine; all warm with love and light,   And bright with holly and with cedar sweet.   My stalwart arm is thine to lean upon;   The feast is spread, I only wait for thee;   God smiles upon thy dead, smile thou on me.’   Then through the open door the Old Year passed   And darkness settled on the outer world.‘ ’   However certain of the way thou art,   Take not the self-appointed leader’s part.   Follow no man, and by no man be led,   And no man lead.  _Awake_, and go ahead.   Thy path, though leading straight unto the goal   Might prove confusing to another soul.   The goal is central; but from east, and west,   And north, and south, we set out on the quest;   From lofty mountains, and from valleys low:—   How could all find one common way to go?   Lord Buddha to the wilderness was brought.   Lord Jesus to the Cross.  And yet, think not   By solitude, or cross, thou canst achieve,   Lest in thine own true Self thou dost believe.   Know thou art One, with life’s Almighty Source,   Then are thy feet set on the certain Course.   Nor does it matter if thou feast, or fast,   Or what thy creed—or where thy lot is cast;   In halls of pleasure or in crowded mart,   In city streets, or from all men apart—   Thy path leads to the Light; and peace and power   Shall be thy portion, growing hour by hour.   Follow no man, and by no man be led.   And no man lead.  But _know_ and go ahead.      What shall the leader be in that great day   When we who sleep and dream that we are slaves   Shall wake and know that Liberty is ours?   Mark well that word—not yours, not mine, but ours.   For through the mingling of the separate streams   Of individual protest and desire,   In one united sea of purpose, lies   The course to Freedom.            When Progression takes   Her undisputed right of way, and sinks   The old traditions and conventions where   They may not rise, what shall the leader be?   No mighty warrior skilled in crafts of war,   Sowing earth’s fertile furrows with dead men   And staining crimson God’s cerulean sea,   To prove his prowess to a shuddering world.   Nor yet a monarch with a silly crown   Perched on an empty head, an in-bred heir   To senseless titles and anemic blood.   No ruler, purchased by the perjured votes   Of striving demagogues whose god is gold.   Not one of these shall lead to Liberty.   The weakness of the world cries out for strength.   The sorrow of the world cries out for hope.   Its suffering cries for kindness.            He who leads   Must then be strong and hopeful as the dawn   That rises unafraid and full of joy   Above the blackness of the darkest night.   He must be kind to every living thing;   Kind as the Krishna, Buddha and the Christ,   And full of love for all created life.   Oh, not in war shall his great prowess lie,   Nor shall he find his pleasure in the chase.   Too great for slaughter, friend of man and beast,   Touching the borders of the Unseen Realms   And bringing down to earth their mystic fires   To light our troubled pathways, wise and kind   And human to the core, so shall he be,   The coming leader of the coming time.     Hear thou my prayer, great God of opulence;   Give me no blessings, save as recompense   For blessings which I lovingly bestow   On needy stranger or on suffering foe.   If Wealth, by chance, should on my path appear,   Let Wisdom and Benevolence stand near,   And Charity within my portal wait,   To guard me from acquaintance intimate.   Yet in this intricate great art of living   Guide me away from misdirected giving,   And show me how to spur the laggard soul   To strive alone once more to gain the goal.   Repay my worldly efforts to attain   Only as I develop heart and brain;   Nor brand me with the ‘Dollar Sign’ above   A bosom void of sympathy and love.   If on the carrying winds my name be blown   To any land or time beyond my own,   Let it not be as one who gained the day   By crowding others from the chosen way;   Rather as one who missed the highest place   Pausing to cheer spent runners in the race.   To do—to have—is lesser than to :   The greater boon I ask, dear God, from Thee.      Thank God for life, in such an age as this,      Rich with the promises of better things.   Thank God for being part of this great nation’s heart,      Whose strong pulsations are not ruled by kings.   Our thanks for fearless and protesting speech      When cloven hoofs show ’neath the robes of state.   For us no servile song of ‘Kings can do no wrong.’      Not royal birth, but worth, makes rulers great.   Thank God for peace within our border lands,      And for the love of peace within each soul.   Who thinks on peace has wrought, mosaic-squares of thought      In the foundation of our future goal.   Our thanks for love, and knowledge of love’s laws.      Love is a greater power than vested might.   Love is the central source of all enduring force.      Love is the law that sets the whole world right.   Our thanks for that increasing torch of light      The tireless hand of science holds abroad.   And may its growing blaze shine on all hidden ways      Till man beholds the silhouette of God.    I know it is early morning,      And hope is calling aloud,   And your heart is afire with Youth’s desire      To hurry along with the crowd.   But linger a bit by the roadside,      And lend a hand by the way,   ’Tis a curious fact that a generous act   Brings leisure and luck to a day.   I know it is only the noontime—      There is chance enough to be kind;   But the hours run fast when noon has passed,      And the shadows are close behind.   So think while the light is shining,      And act ere the set of the sun,   For the sorriest woe that a soul can know      Is to think what it might have done.   I know it is almost evening,      But the twilight hour is long.   If you listen and heed each cry of need      You can right full many a wrong.   For when we have finished the journey      We will all look back and say:   ‘On life’s long mile there was nothing worth while      But the good we did by the way.’ ’S    When with clanging and with ringing      Comes the year’s initial day,   I can feel the rhythmic swinging      Of the world upon its way;   And though Right still wears a fetter,      And though Justice still is blind,   Time’s beyond is always better      Than the paths he leaves behind.   In our eons of existence,      As we circle through the night,   We annihilate the distance      ’Twixt the darkness and the light.   From beginnings crude and lowly,      Round and round our souls have trod   Through the circles, winding slowly      Up to knowledge and to God.   With each century departed      Some old evil found a tomb,   Some old truth was newly started      In propitious soil to bloom.   With each epoch some condition      That has handicapped the race   (Worn-out creed or superstition)      Unto knowledge yields its place.   Though in folly and in blindness      And in sorrow still we grope,   Yet in man’s increasing kindness      Lies the world’s stupendous hope;   For our darkest hour of errors      Is as radiant as the dawn,   Set beside the awful terrors      Of the ages that have gone.   And above the sad world’s sobbing,      And the strife of clan with clan,   I can hear the mighty throbbing      Of the heart of God in man;   And a voice chants through the chiming      Of the bells, and seems to say,   We are climbing, we are climbing,      As we circle on our way.  A    Life is a privilege.  Its youthful days   Shine with the radiance of continuous Mays.   To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire,   To feed with dreams the heart’s perpetual fire;   To thrill with virtuous passions and to glow   With great ambitions—in one hour to know   The depths and heights of feeling—God! in truth   How beautiful, how beautiful is youth!   Life is a privilege.  Like some rare rose   The mysteries of the human mind unclose.   What marvels lie in earth and air and sea,   What stores of knowledge wait our opening key,   What sunny roads of happiness lead out   Beyond the realms of indolence and doubt,   And what large pleasures smile upon and bless   The busy avenues of usefulness.   Life is a privilege.  Though noontide fades   And shadows fall along the winding glades;   Though joy-blooms wither in the autumn air,   Yet the sweet scent of sympathy is there.   Pale sorrow leads us closer to our kind,   And in the serious hours of life we find   Depths in the soul of men which lend new worth   And majesty to this brief span of earth.   Life is a privilege.  If some sad fate   Sends us alone to seek the exit gate;   If men forsake us as the shadows fall,   Still does the supreme privilege of all   Come in that reaching upward of the soul   To find the welcoming presence at the goal,   And in the knowledge that our feet have trod   Paths that lead from and must lead back to God.       Before the statue of a giant Hun,   There stood a dwarf, misshapen and uncouth.   His lifted eyes seemed asking: ‘Why, in sooth,   Was I not fashioned like this mighty one?   Would God show favour to an older son      Like earthly kings, and beggar without ruth      Another, who sinned only by his youth?   Why should two lives in such divergence run?’   Strange, as he gazed, that from a vanished past      No memories revived of war and strife,         Of misused prowess, and of broken law.   That old Hun’s spirit, in the dwarf re-cast,      Lived out the sequence of an earthly life.         _It was the statue of himself he saw_!    God, what a world, if men in street and mart   Felt that same kinship of the human heart   Which makes them, in the face of flame and flood,   Rise to the meaning of true Brotherhood!    Among the virile hosts he passed along,   Conspicuous for an undetermined grace   Of sexless beauty.  In his form and face   God’s mighty purpose somehow had gone wrong.   Then on his loom, he wove a careful song,      Of sensuous threads; a wordy web of lace      Wherein the primal passions of the race   And his own sins made wonder for the throng.   A little pen prick opened up a vein,      And gave the finished mesh a crimson blot—         The last consummate touch of studied art.   But those who knew strong passion and keen pain,      Looked through and through the pattern and found not         One single great emotion of the heart.,     When God had formed the Universe, He thought   Of all the marvels therein to be wrought   And to His aid then Motherhood was brought.   ‘My lesser self, the feminine of Me,   She will go forth throughout all time,’ quoth He,   ‘And make My world what I would have it be.   ‘For I am weary, having laboured so,   And for a cycle of repose would go   Into that silence which but God may know.   ‘Therefore I leave the rounding of My plan   To Motherhood; and that which I began   Let woman finish in perfecting man.   ‘She is the soil: the human Mother Earth:   She is the sun, that calls the seed to earth.   She is the gardener, who knows its worth.   ‘From Me, all seed, of any kind must spring.   Divine the growth such seed and soil will bring.   For all is Me, and I am everything.’   Thus having spoken to Himself aloud,   His glorious face upon His breast He bowed,   And sought repose behind a wall of cloud.   Come forth, O God! though great Thy thought and good,   In shaping woman for true Motherhood,   Lord, speak again; she has not understood.   The centuries pass: the cycles roll along—   The earth is peopled with a mighty throng,   Yet men are fighting and the world goes wrong.   Lord, speak again, ere yet it be too late,   Unloved, unwanted souls come through earth’s gate:   The unborn child is given a dower of hate.   Thy world progresses in all ways save one.   In Motherhood, for which it was begun,   Lord, Lord, behold how little has been done!   Children are spawned like fishes in the sand.   With ignorance and crime they fill the land.   Lord, speak again, till mothers understand.   It is not all of Motherhood to know   Conception pleasure or deliverance woe.   Who plants the seed should help the shoot to grow.   Better a barren soil than weed and tare,   Or sickly plants that die for want of care   In poisonous jungles, void of sun and air.   True Motherhood is not alone to breed   The human race; it is to know and heed   Its holiest purpose and its highest need.   Lord, speak again, so woman shall be stirred   With the full meaning of that mighty word   True Motherhood.  She has not rightly heard.    Unhoused in deserts of accepted thought,      And lost in jungles of confusing creeds,      My soul strayed, homeless, finding its own needs   Unsatisfied with what tradition taught.   The pros and cons, the little ifs and ands,      The but and maybe, and the this and that,      On which the churches thicken and grow fat,   I found but structures built on shifting sands.   And all their heavens were strange and far away,      And all their hells were made of human hate;      And since for death I did not care to wait,   A heaven I fashioned for myself one day.   Of happy thoughts I built it stone by stone,      With joy of life I draped each spacious room,      With love’s great light I drove away all gloom,   And in the centre I made God a throne.   And this dear heaven I set within my heart,      And carried it about with me alway,      And then the changing dogmas of the day   Seemed alien to my thoughts and held no part.   Now as I take my heaven from place to place      I find new rooms by love’s revealing light,      And death will give me but a larger sight   To see my palace spreading into space.   On a bleak, bald hill with a dull world under,      The dreary world of the Commonplace,   I have stood when the whole world seemed a blunder      Of dotard Time, in an aimless race.   With worry about me and want before me—      Yet deep in my soul was a rapture spring   That made me cry to the grey sky o’er me:      ‘Oh, I know this life is a goodly thing!’   I have given sweet years to a thankless duty      While cold and starving, though clothed and fed,   For a young heart’s hunger for joy and beauty      Is harder to bear than the need of bread.   I have watched the wane of a sodden season,      Which let hope wither, and made care thrive,   And through it all, without earthly reason,      I have thrilled with the glory of being alive.   And now I stand by the great sea’s splendour,      Where love and beauty feed heart and eye.   The brilliant light of the sun grows tender      As it slants to the shore of the by and by.   I prize each hour as a golden treasure—      A pearl Time drops from a broken string:   And all my ways are the ways of pleasure,      And I know this life is a goodly thing.   And I know, too, that not in the seeing,      Or having, or doing the things we would,   Lies that deep rapture that comes from being      _At one with the Purpose which made all good_.   And not from Pleasure the heart may borrow      That rare contentment for which we strive,   Unless through trouble, and want, and sorrow      It has thrilled with the glory of being alive.’S    There is no summit you may not attain,      No purpose which you may not yet achieve,      If you will wait serenely and believe   Each seeming loss is but a step toward gain.   Between the mountain-tops lie vale and plain;      Let nothing make you question, doubt or grieve;      Give only good, and good alone receive;   And as you welcome joy, so welcome pain.   That which you most desire awaits your word;      Throw wide the door and bid it enter in.   Speak, and the strong vibrations shall be stirred;      Speak, and above earth’s loud, unmeaning din   Your silent declarations shall be heard.      All things are possible to God’s own kin.   Talk not of strength, until your heart has known   And fought with weakness through long hours alone.   Talk not of virtue, till your conquering soul   Has met temptation and gained full control.   Boast not of garments, all unscorched by sin,   Till you have passed, unscathed, through fires within.   Oh, poor that pride the unscarred soldier shows,   Who safe in camp, has never faced his foes.    A granite rock in the mountain side   Gazed on the world and was satisfied.   It watched the centuries come and go.   It welcomed the sunlight, yet loved the snow.   It grieved when the forest was forced to fall,   Yet joyed when steeples rose, white and tall,   In the valley below it, and thrilled to hear   The voice of the great town roaring near.   When the mountain stream from its idle play   Was caught by the mill wheel and borne away   And trained to labour, the grey rock mused   ‘Trees and verdure and stream are used   By Man the Master; but I remain   Friend of the mountain, and star, and plain,   Unchanged forever by God’s decree,   While passing centuries bow to me.’   Then all unwarned, with a mighty shock   Out of the mountain was wrenched the rock.   Bruised and battered and broken in heart,   It was carried away to the common mart,   Wrecked and ruined in piece and pride.   ‘Oh, God is cruel,’ the granite cried,   ‘Comrade of mountains, of stars the friend,   By all deserted, how sad my end.’   A dreaming sculptor in passing by   Gazed at the granite with thoughtful eye.   Then stirred with a purpose supremely grand   He bade his dream in the rock expand.   And lo! from the broken and shapeless mass   That grieved and doubted, it came to pass   That a glorious statue of priceless worth   And infinite beauty, adorned the earth.    ‘_Since Sinus crossed the Milky Way_, _sixty thousand years have    gone_.’— P. .   Since Sirius crossed the Milky Way      Full sixty thousand years have gone,   Yet hour by hour, and day by day,      This tireless star speeds on and on.   Methinks he must be moved to mirth      By that droll tale of Genesis,   Which says creation had its birth      For such a puny world as this.   To hear how One who fashioned all      Those Solar Systems, tier on tiers,   Expressed in little Adam’s fall      The purpose of a million spheres.   And, witness of the endless plan,      To splendid wrath he must be wrought   By pigmy creeds presumptuous man      Sends forth as God’s primeval thought.   Perchance from half a hundred stars      He hears as many curious things;   From Venus, Jupiter and Mars,      And Saturn with the beauteous rings,   There may be students of the Cause      Who send their revelations out,   And formulate their codes of laws,      With heavens for faith and hells for doubt.   On planets old ere form or place      Was lent to earth, may dwell—who knows—   A God-like and perfected race      That hails great Sirius as he goes.   In zones that circle moon and sun,      ’Twixt world and world, he may see souls   Whose span of earthly life is done,      Still journeying up to higher goals.   And on dead planets grey and cold      Grim spectral souls, that harboured hate   Life after life, he may behold      Descending to a darker fate.   And on his grand majestic course      He may have caught one glorious sight   Of that vast shining central Source      From which proceeds all Life, all Light.   No mortal man may bid him stay,      No mortal man may speed him on.   No mortal mind may comprehend      What is beyond, what was before;   To God be glory without end,      Let man be humble and adore.    At Fontainebleau, I saw a little bed   Fashioned of polished wood, with gold ornate,   Ambition, hope, and sorrow, ay, and hate   Once battled there, above a childish head,   And there in vain, grief wept, and memory plead      It was so small! but Ah, dear God, how great      The part it played in one sad woman’s fate.   How wide the gloom, that narrow object shed.   The symbol of an over-reaching aim,      The emblem of a devastated joy,         It spoke of glory, and a blasted home:   Of fleeting honours, and disordered fame,      And the lone passing of a fragile boy.   It was the cradle of the King of Rome.    Look in the eyes of trouble with a smile,      Extend your hand and do not be afraid.      ’Tis but a friend who comes to masquerade.   And test your faith and courage for awhile.   Fly, and he follows fast with threat and jeer.      Shrink, and he deals hard blow on stinging blow,      But bid him welcome as a friend, and lo!   The jest is off—the masque will disappear.   Is the way hard and thorny, oh, my brother?      Do tempests beat, and adverse wild winds blow?   And are you spent, and broken, at each nightfall,      Yet with each morn you rise and onward go?   Brother, I know, I know!   I, too, have journeyed so.   Is your heart mad with longing, oh, my sister?      Are all great passions in your breast aglow?   Does the white wonder of your own soul blind you,      And are you torn with rapture and with woe?   Sister, I know, I know!   I, too, have suffered so.   Is the road filled with snare and quicksand, pilgrim?      Do pitfalls lie where roses seem to grow?   And have you sometimes stumbled in the darkness,      And are you bruised and scarred by many a blow?   Pilgrim, I know, I know!   I, too, have stumbled so.   Do you send out rebellious cry and question,      As mocking hours pass silently and slow,   Does your insistent ‘wherefore’ bring no answer,      While stars wax pale with watching, and droop low?   I, too, have questioned so,   But now _I know_, _I know_!   To toil, to strive, to err, to cry, to grow,   _To love through_ all—this is the way to _know_.   When from the prison of its body free,   My soul shall soar, before it goes to Thee,   Thou great Creator, give it power to know   The language of all sad, dumb things below.   And let me dwell a season still on earth   Before I rise to some diviner birth:   Invisible to men, yet seen and heard,   And understood by sorrowing beast and bird—   Invisible to men, yet always near,   To whisper counsel in the human ear:   And with a spell to stay the hunter’s hand   And stir his heart to know and understand;   To plant within the dull or thoughtless mind   The great religious impulse to be kind.   Before I prune my spirit wings and rise   To seek my loved ones in their paradise,   Yea! even before I hasten on to see   That lost child’s face, so like a dream to me,   I would be given this intermediate role,   And carry comfort to each poor, dumb soul:   And bridge man’s gulf of cruelty and sin   By understanding of his lower kin.   ’Twixt weary driver and the straining steed   On wings of mercy would my spirit speed.   And each should know, before his journey’s end,   That in the other dwelt a loving friend.   From zoo and jungle, and from cage and stall,   I would translate each inarticulate call,   Each pleading look, each frenzied act and cry,   And tell the story to each passer-by;   And of a spirit’s privilege possessed,   Pursue indifference to its couch of rest,   And whisper in its ear until in awe   It woke and knew God’s all-embracing law   Of Universal Life—the One in All.   Lord, let this mission to my lot befall.         ‘Hurry up!’   No lingering by old doors of doubt—      No loitering by the way,   No waiting a To-morrow car,      When you can board To-day.   Success is somewhere down the track;      Before the chance is gone   Accelerate your laggard pace,      Swing on, I say, swing on—         Hurry up!         ‘Step lively!’   Belated souls are following fast,      They shout and signal, ‘Wait.’   Conductor Time brooks no delay,      He rings the bell of Fate.   But you can give the man behind,      With one hand on the bar,   A final chance to brook defeat,      And board the moving car.         Step lively!         ‘Move up!’   Make way for others as you sit      Or stand.  This crowded earth   Has room for every journeying soul      En route to higher birth.   Ay, room and comfort, if no one      Took double share or space,   Nor let his greed and selfishness      Absorb another’s place.         Move up!         ‘Hold fast!’   The jolting switch of obstacles      With jarring rails is near.   Stand firm of foot, be strong of grip,      Brace well and have no fear.   The Maker of the Car of Life      Foresaw that curve—Despair,   And hung the straps of faith, and hope      So you might grasp them there.         Hold fast!   Send forth your heart’s desire, and work and wait;   The opportunities of life are brought   To our own doors, not by capricious fate,   But by the strong compelling force of thought.       The wonderful age of the world I sing—   The age of battery, coil and spring,   Of steam, and storage, and motored thing.   Though faith may slumber and art seem dead,   And all that is spoken has once been said,   And all that is written were best unread;   Though hearts are iron and thoughts are steel,   And all that has value is mercantile,   Yet marvellous truths shall the age reveal.   Ay, greater the marvels this age shall find   Than all the centuries left behind,   When faith was a bigot and art was blind.   Oh, sorry the search of the world for gods,   Through faith that slaughters and art that lauds,   While reason sits on its throne and nods.   But out of the leisure that men will know,   When the cruel things of the sad earth go,   A Faith that is Knowledge shall rise and grow.   In the throb and whir of each new machine   Thinner is growing the veil between   The visible earth and the worlds unseen.   The True Religion shall leisure bring;   And Art shall awaken and Love shall sing:   Oh, ho! for the age of the motored thing!     Who is the strong?  Not he who puts to test   His sinews with the strong and proves the best;   But he who dwells where weaklings congregate,   And never lets his splendid strength abate.   Who is the good?  Not he who walks each day   With moral men along the high, clean way;   But he who jostles gilded sin and shame,   Yet will not sell his honour or his name.   Who is the wise?  Not he who from the start   With Wisdom’s followers has taken part;   But he who looks in Folly’s tempting eyes,   And turns away, perceiving her disguise.   Who is serene?  Not he who flees his kind,   Some mountain fastness, or some cave to find;   But he who in the city’s noisiest scene,   Keeps calm within—he only is serene. Lean on no mortal, Love, and serve;   (For service is love’s complement)   But it was never God’s intent,   Your spirit from its path should swerve,   To gain another’s point of view.   As well might Jupiter, or Mars   Go seeking help from other stars,   Instead of sweeping , as you.   Look to the Great Eternal Cause   And not to any man, for light.   Look in; and learn the wrong, and right,   From your own soul’s unwritten laws.   And when you question, or demur,   Let Love be your Interpreter.   God, what a glory, is this consciousness,   Of life on life, that comes to those who seek!   Nor would I, if I might, to others speak,   The fulness of that knowledge.  It can bless,   Only the eager souls, that willing, press   Along the mountain passes, to the peak.   Not to the dull, the doubting, or the weak,   Will Truth explain, or Mystery confess.   Not to the curious or impatient soul   That in the start, demands the end be shown,   And at each step, stops waiting for a sign;   But to the tireless toiler toward the goal,   Shall the great miracles of God be known   And life revealed, immortal and divine.   Would you believe in Presences Unseen—      In life beyond this earthly life?    : Be stiller yet; and listen.  Set the screen      Of silence at the portal of your will.   Relax, and let the world go by unheard.   And seal your lips with some all-sacred word.   Breathe ‘God,’ in any tongue—it means the same;       : Think, feel, absorb the thought;   Shut out all else; until a subtle flame      (A spark from God’s creative centre caught)   Shall permeate your being, and shall glow,   Increasing in its splendour, till,  .   Not in a moment, or an hour, or day      The knowledge comes; the power is far too great,   To win in any desultory way.      No soul is worthy till it learns to wait.   Day after day be patient, then, oh, soul;   Month after month—till, lo! the goal! the goal!   The leaf that ripens only in the sun   Is dull and shrivelled ere its race is run.   The leaf that makes a carnival of death   Must tremble first before the north wind’s breath.   The life that neither grief nor burden knows   Is dwarfed in sympathy before its close.   The life that grows majestic with the years   Must taste the bitter tonic found in tears.    Hers was a lonely, shadowed lot;   Or so the unperceiving thought,   Who looked no deeper than her face,   Devoid of chiselled lines of grace—   No farther than her humble grate,   And wondered how she bore her fate.   Yet she was neither lone nor sad;   So much of love her spirit had,   She found an ever-flowing spring   Of happiness in everything.   So near to her was Nature’s heart   It seemed a very living part   Of her own self; and bud and blade,   And heat and cold, and sun and shade,   And dawn and sunset, Spring and Fall,   Held raptures for her, one and all.   The year’s four changing seasons brought   To her own door what thousands sought   In wandering ways and did not find—   Diversion and content of mind.   She loved the tasks that filled each day—   Such menial duties; but her way   Of looking at them lent a grace   To things the world deemed commonplace.   Obscure and without place or name,   She gloried in another’s fame.   Poor, plain and humble in her dress,   She thrilled when beauty and success   And wealth passed by, on pleasure bent;   They made earth seem so opulent.   Yet none of quicker sympathy,   When need or sorrow came, than she.   And so she lived, and so she died.   She woke as from a dream.  How wide   And wonderful the avenue   That stretched to her astonished view!   And up the green ascending lawn   A palace caught the rays of dawn.   Then suddenly the silence stirred   With one clear keynote of a bird;   A thousand answered, till ere long   The air was quivering bits of song.   She rose and wandered forth in awe,   Amazed and moved by all she saw,   For, like so many souls who go   Away from earth, she did not know   The cord was severed.            Down the street,   With eager arms stretched forth to greet,   Came one she loved and mourned in youth;   Her mother followed; then the truth   Broke on her, golden wave on wave,   Of knowledge infinite.  The grave,   The body and the earthly sphere   Were gone!  Immortal life was here!   They led her through the Palace halls;   From gleaming mirrors on the walls   She saw herself, with radiant mien,   And robed in splendour like a queen,   While glory round about her shone.   ‘All this,’ Love murmured, ‘is your own.’   And when she gazed with wondering eye,   And questioned whence and where and why,   Love answered thus: ‘All Heaven is made   By thoughts on earth; your walls were laid,   Year after year, of purest gold;   The beauty of your mind behold   In this fair palace; ay, and more   Waits farther on, so vast your store.   I was not worthy when I died   To take my place here at your side;   I toiled through long and weary years   From lower planes to these high spheres;   And through the love you sent from earth   I have attained a second birth.   Oft when my erring soul would tire   I felt the strength of your desire;   I heard you breathe my name in prayer,   And courage conquered weak despair.   Ah! earth needs heaven, but heaven indeed   Of earth has just as great a need.’   Across the terrace with a bound   There sped a lambkin and a hound   (Dumb comrades of the old earth land)   And fondled her caressing hand.   ‘    ’   Was answered to her questioning eyes;   ‘You taught them love; love has no end!   Nor does love’s life on form depend.   If there be mortal without love,   He wakes to no new life above.   If love in humbler things exist,   It must through other realms persist   Until all love rays merge in .   Hark!  Hear the heavenly Cherubim!’   Then hushed and awed, with joy so vast   It knew no future and no past,   She stood amidst the radiant throng   That came to swell love’s welcoming song—   This humble soul from earth’s far coast   The centre of the heavenly host.   On earth they see her grave and say:   ‘She lies there till the judgment day;’   Nor dream, so limited their thought,   What miracles by love are wrought.