Chapter IV

And still the fire-flies come and go—
Each is a dreamy flame—
Still palely drifting to and fro
The very way they came—
As though, across the dark they wove
Fate and the shining web thereof.

Yet, even were I sure of it,
I would not lift a hand
To break the threads that shine and flit—
For, ah, I understand:
Ruin, indeed, I well might leave;
But a new web could never weave.

_Spring._

Spring, the tender maiden,
Like a girl who greets her lover,
Comes, her apron laden
Deep with flower and leaf we liked of old;
Not a sprig forgetting
That we then demanded of her;
Changing not nor setting
Out of place the tiniest frill or fold.

See, the aspen still is
Hung awry to droop and falter;
Still the leaves of lilies
Lift aloft their tall and tender sheath.
Wiser than the sages,
Spring would never dare to alter
What so many ages
Showed already right in bloom and wreath.

Ah, could Spring remember
Every thrill and fancy perished
In the soul’s December;
Lost for ever, faded from the truth!
Holy things and tender,
Dead, alas! however cherished.
Breathe, O Spring, and render
That forgotten radiance of our youth!

_Sacrifice._

O patient-eyed and tender saint,
Too far from thee I stand,
With vain desires perplexed and faint;
Reach out thy helping hand.
No fire is on the holy hill,
No voice on Sinai now;
But, in our gloom and darkness still
Abiding, help me thou.

They move on whom thy light is shed
Through lives of larger scope;
For them beneath the false and dead
There stirs a quickening hope.
So on some gusty morn we mark
The reddening tops of trees,
And hear in carols of the lark
Thespesian promises.

_Writing History._

The profit of my living long ago
I dedicated to the unloving dead,
Though all my service they shall never know
Whose world is vanished and their name unsaid.

For none remembers now the good, the ill
They did, the deeds they thought should last for aye:
But in the little room my voice can fill
They shall not be forgotten till I die.

So, in a lonely churchyard by the shore,
The sea winds drift the sand across the mounds
And those forgotten graves are found no more,
And no man knows the churchyard’s holy bounds;

Till one come by and stoop with reverent hands
To clear the graves of their encumbering sands.

_The Alembic._

In this alembic have I cast my youth,
For here I do believe if anywhere,
Here where the fires of death burn all things bare
I may distil the eternal gold of Truth.

Therefore the future is an empty name,
And life to me a dream that will not last,
And all my care is only for the Past,
Veiled with the veil of no man’s ruth or shame.

Yea, Death, that hast the secret Life withholds,
Thy meek and patient servitor am I;
And from thine alchemy I will not cease
Until I find amid thine essences,
Writ in a little sand of divers golds,
The answer to the eternal How and Why.

_The Wall._

The sun falls through the olive-trees
And shines upon the wall below,
And lights the wall which cannot know
The Sunlight that it never sees.

I lie and dream; the Eternal Mind
Rains down on me and fills me full
With secrets high and wonderful;
And still my soul is deaf and blind.

_The Idea._

Beneath this world of stars and flowers
That rolls in visible deity,
I dream another world is ours
And is the soul of all we see.

It hath no form, it hath no spirit;
It is perchance the Eternal Mind;
Beyond the sense that we inherit
I feel it dim and undefined.

How far below the depth of being,
How wide beyond the starry bound
It rolls unconscious and unseeing,
And is as Number or as Sound.

And through the vast fantastic visions
Of all this actual universe,
It moves unswerved by our decisions,
And is the play that we rehearse.

_The Ideal._

The night is dark and warm and very still,
Only the moon goes pallid and alone;
The moon and I the whole wide heavens fill,
And all the earth lies little, lost, unknown.

I walk along the byways of my Soul,
Beyond the streets where all the world may go,
Until at last I reach the hidden goal
Built up in strength where only I may know.

For in my Soul a temple have I made,
Set on a height, divine and steep and far,
Nor often may I hope those floors to tread,
Or reach the gates that glimmer like a star.

O secret, inner shining of my dream,
How clear Thou risest on my soul to-night!
Forth will I fare and seek the heavenly beam,
And stand within the precincts of the light.

And I will press beyond the curtain’d door,
And up the empty aisle where no one sings;
There will I fall before thee and adore,
And feel the shadowy winnowing of thy wings.

So will I reach thee, Spirit; for I have known
Thy voice, and looked upon thy blinding eyes;
And well thou knowest the world to me is grown
One dimness whence thy dreamy beacons rise.

Nor ask I any hope nor any end,
That thus for thee I dream all day, all night;
But, like the moon along the skies, I wend,
Knowing no world below my borrowed light.

_God in a Heart._