EXILE

Had the gods loved me I had lain
  Where darnel is, and thorn,
And the wild night-bird’s nightlong strain
  Trembles in boughs forlorn.

Nay, but they loved me not; and I
  Must needs a stranger be,
Whose every exiled day gone by
  Aches with their memory.

WHERE?

Where is my love—­
  In silence and shadow she lies,
Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies;
    And a bird above,
  In the darkness tender and clear,
Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here!

    Not that she’s dead;
  Only her soul is flown
Out of its last pure earthly mansion;
    And cries instead
  In the darkness, tender and clear,
Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love—­
      Love lies here.

MUSIC UNHEARD

Sweet sounds, begone—­
  Whose music on my ear
Stirs foolish discontent
  Or lingering here;
When, if I crossed
  The crystal verge of death,
Him I should see. 
  Who these sounds murmureth.

Sweet sounds, begone—­
  Ask not my heart to break
Its bond of bravery for
  Sweet quiet’s sake;
Lure not my feet
  To leave the path they must
Tread on, unfaltering,
  Till I sleep in dust.

Sweet sounds, begone! 
  Though silence brings apace
Deadly disquiet
  Of this homeless place;
And all I love
  In beauty cries to me,
“We but vain shadows
  And reflections be.”

ALL THAT’S PAST

Very old are the woods;
  And the buds that break
Out of the brier’s boughs,
  When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are—­
  Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
  Roves back the rose.

Very old are the brooks;
  And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
  The azure skies
Sing such a history
  Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
  As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
  Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden
  By Eve’s nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
  But, the day gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
  Of amaranth lie.

WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED

When the rose is faded,
  Memory may still dwell on
Her beauty shadowed,
  And the sweet smell gone.

That vanishing loveliness,
  That burdening breath
No bond of life hath then
  Nor grief of death.

’Tis the immortal thought
  Whose passion still
Makes of the changing
  The unchangeable.

Oh, thus thy beauty,
  Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow, shines
  And burns, with Thee.