Chapter III

Summer and spring are wed
In her--her nature; and the glamour of
Their loveliness, their bounty, as it were,
Of life, and joy, and love,
Her being seems to shed,
The magic aura of the heart of her.

THE ROSE’S SECRET

When down the west the new moon slipped,
A curved canoe that dipped and tipped,
When from the rose the dewdrop dripped,
As if it shed its heart’s blood slow;
As softly silent as a star
I climbed a lattice that I know,
A window lattice, held ajar
By one slim hand as white as snow:
The hand of her who set me here,
A rose, to bloom from year to year.

I, who have heard the bird of June
Sing all night long beneath the moon;
I, who have heard the zephyr croon
Soft music ’mid spring’s avenues,
Heard then a sweeter sound than these,
Among the shadows and the dews--
A heart that beat like any bee’s,
Sweet with a name--and I know whose:
Her heart that, leaning, pressed on me,
A rose, she never looked to see.
O star and moon! O wind and bird!
Ye harkened, too, but never heard
The secret sweet, the whispered word
I heard, when by her lips his name
Was murmured.--Then she saw me there!--
But that I heard was I to blame?
Whom in the darkness of her hair
She thrust since I had heard the same:
Condemned within its deeps to lie,
A rose, imprisoned till I die.

THE HUSHED HOUSE

I, who went at nightfall, came again at dawn;
On Love’s door again I knocked.--Love was gone.

He who oft had bade me in, now would bid no more;
Silence sat within his house; barred its door.

When the slow door opened wide through it I could see
How the emptiness within stared at me.

Through the dreary chambers, long I sought and sighed,
But no answering footstep came; naught replied.

Then at last I entered, dim, a darkened room:
There a taper glimmered gray in the gloom.

And I saw one lying crowned with helichrys;
Never saw I face as fair as was his.

Like a wintry lily was his brow in hue;
And his cheeks were each a rose, wintry, too.

Then my soul remembered all that made us part,
And what I had laughed at once--broke my heart.

UNFORGOTTEN

I

How many things, that we would remember,
Sweet or sad, or great or small,
Do our minds forget! and how one thing only,
One little thing endures o’er all!
For many things have I forgotten,
But this one thing can never forget--
The scent of a primrose, woodland-wet,
Long years ago I found in a far land;
A fragile flower that April set,
Rainy pink, in her forehead’s garland.

II

How many things by the heart are forgotten!
Sad or sweet, or little or great!
And how one thing that could mean nothing
Stays knocking still at the heart’s red gate!
For many things has my heart forgotten,
But this one thing can never forget--
The face of a girl, a moment met,
Who smiled in my eyes; whom I passed in pity;
A flower-like face, with weeping wet,
Flung to the streets of a mighty city.

UNSUCCESS

_A modern Poet addresses his Muse, to whom he has devoted the best Years of his Life_

I

Not here, O belovéd! not here let us part, in the city, but there!
Out there where the storm can enfold us, on the hills, where
its breast is made bare:
Its breast, that is rainy and cool as the fern that drips by the fall
In the luminous night of the woodland where winds to the waters call.
Not here, O belovéd! not here! but there! out there in the storm!
The rush and the reel of the heavens, the tempest, whose rapturous arm
Shall seize us and sweep us together,--resistless as passions seize men,--
Through the rocking world of the woodland, with its multitude
music, and then,
With the rain on our lips, belovéd! in the heart of the night’s wild hell,
One last, long kiss forever, and forever and ever farewell.

II

I am sick of the madness of men; of the bootless struggle and strife:
Of the pain and the patience of waiting; the scoff and the
scorning of life:
I am sick of the shapes and the shadows; the sins and the
sorrows that crowd
The gateways of heart and of brain; of the laughter, the shout
that is loud
In the mouth of Success--Success, that was never for me, ah me!--
And all the wrong and neglect that are heaped beloved, on thee!
I am sick of the whining of failure; the boast and the brag of Success;
The vainness of effort and longing; the dreams and the days that oppress:
I am sick of them all; but am sickest, am sickest in body and soul,
Of the love that I bear thee, beloved! and only thy death can make whole.

III

Imperfect, imperfect God made us,--or the power that men call God.--
And I think that a Power so perfect, that made us with merely a nod,
Could have fashioned us beings less faulty; more able to wear and to bear;
Less open to mar and to fracture; less filled with the stuff of despair:
Less damned with the unavailing; less empty of all good things--
The hopes and the dreams that mature not while the clay still
to them clings:
I am sick of it all, belovéd! of the world and the ways of God;
The thorns that have pierced thy bosom; the shards of the paths
we have trod:
I am sick of going and coming; and of love I am sickest of all:
The striving, the praying, the dreaming; and the things that
never befall.--
So there in the storm and the darkness,--O fair, and O fugitive!--
Out there in the night, belovéd, must thou die so I may live!

THE FIRST QUARTER