THE GLIMPSE

Art thou asleep? or have thy wings
Wearied of my unchanging skies? 
Or, haply, is it fading dreams
    Are in my eyes?

Not even an echo in my heart
Tells me the courts thy feet trod last,
Bare as a leafless wood it is,
    The summer past.

My inmost mind is like a book
The reader dulls with lassitude,
Wherein the same old lovely words
    Sound poor and rude.

Yet through this vapid surface, I
Seem to see old-time deeps; I see,
Past the dark painting of the hour,
    Life’s ecstasy.

Only a moment; as when day
Is set, and in the shade of night,
Through all the clouds that compassed her,
    Stoops into sight

Pale, changeless, everlasting Dian,
Gleams on the prone Endymion,
Troubles the dulness of his dreams: 
    And then is gone.

REMEMBRANCE

The sky was like a waterdrop
  In shadow of a thorn,
Clear, tranquil, beautiful,
  Dark, forlorn.

Lightning along its margin ran;
  A rumour of the sea
Rose in profundity and sank
  Into infinity.

Lofty and few the elms, the stars
  In the vast boughs most bright;
I stood a dreamer in a dream
  In the unstirring night.

Not wonder, worship, not even peace
  Seemed in my heart to be: 
Only the memory of one,
  Of all most dead to me.

TREACHERY

She had amid her ringlets bound
Green leaves to rival their dark hue;
How could such locks with beauty bound
      Dry up their dew,
    Wither them through and through?

She had within her dark eyes lit
Sweet fires to burn all doubt away;
Yet did those fires, in darkness lit,
      Burn but a day,
    Not even till twilight stay.

She had within a dusk of words
A vow in simple splendour set;
How, in the memory of such words,
      Could she forget
    That vow—­the soul of it?

IN VAIN

I knocked upon thy door ajar,
While yet the woods with buds were grey;
Nought but a little child I heard
    Warbling at break of day.

I knocked when June had lured her rose
To mask the sharpness of its thorn;
Knocked yet again, heard only yet
    Thee singing of the morn.

The frail convolvulus had wreathed
Its cup, but the faint flush of eve
Lingered upon thy Western wall;
    Thou hadst no word to give.

Once yet I came; the winter stars
Above thy house wheeled wildly bright;
Footsore I stood before thy door—­
    Wide open into night.

THE MIRACLE

Who beckons the green ivy up
  Its solitary tower of stone? 
What spirit lures the bindweed’s cup
      Unfaltering on? 
Calls even the starry lichen to climb
By agelong inches endless Time?