It was Sorrow’s face,
Wanting kindness and grace,
And wanting strength of silence, and the power
To abide a luckier hour.

The first fear turned to hating
As I saw him dumbly waiting,
For it was my true likeness that he wore
And would wear evermore:—­

My face that was to be
When his years’ misery
With here a little and there a little had made
My strong spirit afraid.

I saw his face and hated,
Seeing mine so sad-fated. 
And then I struck and killed him, knowing that he
Had else slain me.

I HAVE NEVER LOVED YOU YET

I have never loved you yet, if now I love.

If Love was born in that bright April sky
And ran unheeding when the sun was high,
And slept as the moon sleeps through Autumn nights
While those dear steady stars burn in their heights: 

If Love so lived and ran and slept and woke
And ran in beauty when each morning broke,
Love yet was boylike, fervid and unstable,
Teased with romance, not knowing truth from fable.

But Winter after Autumn comes and stills
The petulant waters and the wild mind fills
With silence; and the dark and cold are bitter,
O, bitter to remember past days sweeter.

Then Spring with one warm cloudy finger breaks
The frost and the heart’s airless black soil shakes;
Love grown a man uprises, serious, bright
With mind remembering now things dark and light.

O, if young Love was beautiful, Love grown old
Experienced and grave is not grown cold. 
Life’s faithful fire in Love’s heart burns the clearer
With all that was, is and draws darkling nearer.

I have never loved you yet, if now I love.

THE PIGEONS

The pigeons, following the faint warm light,
Stayed at last on the roof till warmth was gone,
Then in the mist that’s hastier than night
Disappeared all behind the carved dark stone,
Huddling from the black cruelty of the frost. 
With the new sparkling sun they swooped and came
Like a cloud between the sun and street, and then
Like a cloud blown from the blue north were lost,
Vanishing and returning ever again,
Small cloud following cloud across the flame
That clear and meagre burned and burned away
And left the ice unmelting day by day.

...  Nor could the sun through the roof’s purple slate
(Though his gold magic played with shadow there
And drew the pigeons from the streaming air)
With any fiery magic penetrate. 
Under the roof the air and water froze,
And no smoke from the gaping chimney rose. 
The silver frost upon the window-pane
Flowered and branched each starving night anew,
And stranger, lovelier and crueller grew;
Pouring her silver that cold silver through,
The moon made all the dim flower bright again.