Others may need new life in Heaven,
Man, Nature, Art, made new, assume!
Man with new mind old sense to leaven,
Nature, new light to clear old gloom,
Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room.

I shall pray: “Fugitive as precious,
Minutes which passed, return, remain!
Let earth’s old life once more enmesh us,
You with old pleasure, me, old, pain,
So we but meet nor part again!”

    The fluttering leaves above his grave,
    The grasses creeping toward the light,
    The flowers fragile, sweet, and brave,
    That hide the earth clods from our sight,

    The swelling buds on shrub and tree,
    The golden gleam of daffodil,
    The violet blooming fair and free
    Where late the winds blew harsh and chill,

    The lily lifting up its breath
    Where snowdrifts spread but yesterday -
    All cry: "Where is thy sting, O death?
    O grave, where is thy victory?"

    Each Eastertide the old world sings
    Her anthem sweet and true and strong,
    And all the tender growing things
    Join in her resurrection song.

One blessing had I, than the rest
So larger to my eyes
That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
For this enchanted size.

It was the limit of my dream,
The focus of my prayer, --
A perfect, paralyzing bliss
Contented as despair.

I knew no more of want or cold,
Phantasms both become,
For this new value in the soul,
Supremest earthly sum.

The heaven below the heaven above
Obscured with ruddier hue.
Life's latitude leant over-full;
The judgment perished, too.

Why joys so scantily disburse,
Why Paradise defer,
Why floods are served to us in bowls, --
I speculate no more.

I dreamed within a dream the sun was gold;
And as I walked beneath this golden sun,
The world was like a mighty play-room old,
Made for our pleasure since it was begun.

But when I waked I found the sun was air,
The world was air, and all things only seemed,
Except the thoughts we grow by; for in prayer
We change to spirits such as God has dreamed.

        Through rivers of veins on the nameless quest
    The tide of my life goes hurriedly sweeping,
        Till it reaches that curious wheel o' the breast,
        The human heart, which is never at rest.
    Faster, faster, it cries, and leaping,
        Plunging, dashing, speeding away,
        The wheel and the river work night and day.

        I know not wherefore, I know not whither,
    This strange tide rushes with such mad force:
        It glides on hither, it slides on thither,
    Over and over the selfsame course,
    With never an outlet and never a source;
        And it lashes itself to the heat of passion
        And whirls the heart in a mill-wheel fashion.

        I can hear in the hush of the still, still night,
    The ceaseless...

Ternissa! you are fled!
I say not to the dead,
But to the happy ones who rest below:
For, surely, surely, where
Your voice and graces are,
Nothing of death can any feel or know.
Girls who delight to dwell
Where grows most asphodel,
Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak:
The mild Persephone
Places you on her knee,
And your cool palm smooths down stern Pluto's cheek.

O charming blossom of the sea
    Atlantic waters bosomed in!
Abiding-place of gayety,
    Elysian bower of "Cora Linn,"
The sprightly, lively débiteuse
Recounting all she sees and does.

Oh, how it makes the northern heart,
    With sluggish current half-congealed,
In ecstasy and vigor start
    To read about this tropic field;
The garden of luxuriousness,
In winter wearing summer's dress.

With gelid sap and frozen gum
    In maple trees and hackmatack,
While waiting for the spring to come
    Of life's necessities we lack;
And sip the nectar that we find
In luscious fruit with golden rind.

But down the street we dread to walk,
    For all the teachings of our youth
Receive an agonizing shock;
    Do tem...

        She was but a child, a child,
    And I a man grown;
        Sweet she was, and fresh, and wild,
    And, I thought, my own.
What could I do? The long grass groweth,
    The long wave floweth with a murmur on:
The why and the wherefore of it all who knoweth?
    Ere I thought to lose her she was grown - and gone.
This day or that day in warm spring weather.
The lamb that was tame will yearn to break its tether.
"But if the world wound thee," I said, "come back to me,
Down in the dell wishing - wishing, wishing for thee."

        The dews hang on the white may,
    Like a ghost it stands,
        All in the dusk before day
    That folds the dim lands:

Dark fell the skies when once belated,
    Sad, and sorrow-fated, I missed the sun;

Though bleak these woods and damp the ground
With fallen leaves so thickly strewn,
And cold the wind that wanders round
With wild and melancholy moan,

There is a friendly roof I know
Might shield me from the wintry blast;
There is a fire whose ruddy glow
Will cheer me for my wanderings past.

And so, though still where'er I roam
Cold stranger glances meet my eye,
Though when my spirit sinks in woe
Unheeded swells the unbidden sigh,

Though solitude endured too long
Bids youthful joys too soon decay,
Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue
And overclouds my noon of day,

When kindly thoughts that would have way
Flow back discouraged to my breast
I know there is, though far away
A home where heart and soul may rest.

War...

"'He cometh not,' she said."
- MARIANA

It will not be to-day and yet
I think and dream it will; and let
The slow uncertainty devise
So many sweet excuses, met
With the old doubt in hope's disguise.

The panes were sweated with the dawn;
Yet through their dimness, shriveled drawn,
The aigret of one princess-feather,
One monk's-hood tuft with oilets wan,
I glimpsed, dead in the slaying weather.

This morning, when my window's chintz
I drew, how gray the day was! - Since
I saw him, yea, all days are gray! -
I gazed out on my dripping quince,
Defruited, gnarled; then turned away

To weep, but did not weep: but felt
A colder anguish than did melt
About the tearful-visaged year! -
Then flung the lattice wide, and smelt...

Yon late but gleaming Moon, in hoary light
    Shines out unveil'd, and on the cloud's dark fleece
    Rests; - but her strengthen'd beams appear to increase
    The wild disorder of this troubled Night.
Redoubling Echos seem yet more to excite
    The roaring Winds and Waters! - Ah! why cease
    Resolves, that promis'd everlasting peace,
    And drew my steps to this incumbent height?
I wish! - I shudder! - stretch my longing arms
    O'er the steep cliff! - My swelling spirits brave
    The leap, that quiets all these dire alarms,
And floats me tossing on the stormy wave!
    But Oh! what roots my feet? - what spells, what charms
    The daring purpose of my Soul enslave?

When my good Angell guides me to the place
Where all my good I doe in Stella see,
That heau'n of ioyes throwes onely downe on me
Thundring disdaines and lightnings of disgrace;
But when the ruggedst step of Fortunes race
Makes me fall from her sight, then sweetly she,
With words wherein the Muses treasures be,
Shewes loue and pitie to my absent case.
Now I, wit-beaten long by hardest fate,
So dull am, that I cannot looke into
The ground of this fierce loue and louely hate.
Then, some good body, tell me how I do,
Whose presence absence, absence presence is;
Blest in my curse, and cursed in my blisse.

Turn thy fair face to the breaking dawn,
Lily so white, that through all the dark,
Hast kept lone watch on the dewy lawn,
Deeming thy comrades grown cold and stark;
Soon shall the sunbeam, joyous and strong,
Dry the tears in thy stamens of gold--
Glinteth the day up merry and long,
    And the night grows old.

Turn thy fair face to Faith's rosy sky,
Soul so white that lone night hath kept
Sighing for spirits sin-bound that lie;
Wrong has ruled right, and the truth has slept;
The dawn shall show thee a host ere long,
Planting sweet roses abqve the mould;
The sun of righteousness beameth strong,
    And sin's night grows old.

Turn thine eyes to the burnished zone
From out of thy nest neath darkened eaves,
Oh bird, who hast mingled thy plain...

    These eyes of dolls seem leaden stones
    not canisters of the Faith
    but cannon-balls engraved
    in tome-like stares so much
    waxen shapes, these dust cloths
    & spidery webs.

    Dolls with eyes stare
    lidless & forlorn
    such eyes are cracks
    minden shapes or basement eves
    hogans of the human form.
    I'm interested in the priapic
    silence of such dolls - their
    indolent aura in time
    one long amber twilight
    & the results are in
    the shadows have produced twins
    ...hazy silhouettes rough-housing
    in the dark, come passing headlights
    although the stampede of noises
    affects nought.

    Ticker-tape & collage
    in quick thick barrage
    th...

    [NOTE. - The following lines were written by request, to be read at a Meeting of the "Girls' Friendly Society."]


    What should a maiden be?    Pure as the rill,
    Ere it has left its first home in the hill;
    Thinking no evil, suspecting no guile,
    Cherishing nought that can harm or defile.

    What should a maiden be?    Honest and true,
    Giving to God and to neighbour their due;
    Modest and merciful, simple and neat,
    Clad in the white robe of innocence sweet.

    What should a maiden be?    She should be loath
    Lightly to give or receive loving troth;
    But when her faith is once plighted, till breath
    Leave her, her love should be stronger than death.

    What should a maiden be?    Merry, whene'er
    Merr...

Where had her sweetness gone?
What fanatics invent
In this blind bitter town,
Fantasy or incident
Not worth thinking of,
put her in a rage.
I had forgiven enough
That had forgiven old age.
All lives that has lived;
So much is certain;
Old sages were not deceived:
Somewhere beyond the curtain
Of distorting days
Lives that lonely thing
That shone before these eyes
Targeted, trod like Spring.

When, by an edict of the powers supreme,
The Poet in this bored world comes to be,
His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,
Rages to God, who looks down piteously:

'Rather than have this mockery to nurse
Why not a nest of snakes for me to bear!
And may that night of fleeting lust be cursed,
When I conceived my penance, unaware!

Since from all women you chose me to shame,
To be disgusting to my grieving spouse,
And since I can't just drop into the flames
Like an old love-note, this misshapen mouse,

1'1l turn your hate that overburdens me
Toward the damned agent of your spiteful doom,
And I will twist this miserable tree
So its infected buds will never bloom!'

She swallows thus her hatred's foaming spit
And, never grasping the divine ...

Oh, Villa Maria, thrice favored spot,
Unclouded sunshine is still thy lot
    Since first, 'neath thy mortal old,
The spouses of Christ - working out God's will,
Meekly entered, their mission high to fill
    'Mid the "little ones" of His fold.

But grief's dark hour, that to all must come,
At length is on thee, and as a tomb,
    Hushed, joyless, art thou to-day,
For the lofty mind that thy councils led,
To womanly sweetness so closely wed,
    Has been called by death away.

"One 'mid a thousand!" no words could tell
The peerless worth that, like holy spell,
    Won all souls to saintly love;
And that knowledge rare of the human heart
That, with heavenly patience and gentle art,
    The coldest breast could move.

Oh! girlish natures...