large voice
Out of the inscrutable future whispered so? 
Or but the horror of a little noise
Earth wakes at dead of night?  Or does Love know
When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even
In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse? 
Or, haply, was it I who out of dream
Stole but a little where shadows course,
Called back to thee across the eternal stream?

“Where is thy Victory?”

None, none can tell where I shall be
When the unclean earth covers me;
Only in surety if thou cry
Where my perplexed ashes lie,
Know, ’tis but death’s necessity
That keeps my tongue from answering thee.

Even if no more my shadow may
Lean for a moment in thy day;
No more the whole earth lighten, as if,
Thou near, it had nought else to give: 
Surely ’tis but Heaven’s strategy
To prove death immortality.

Yet should I sleep—­and no more dream,
Sad would the last awakening seem,
If my cold heart, with love once hot,
Had thee in sleep remembered not: 
How could I wake to find that I
Had slept alone, yet easefully?

Or should in sleep glad visions come: 
Sick, in an alien land, for home
Would be my eyes in their bright beam;
Awake, we know ’tis not a dream;
Asleep, some devil in the mind
Might truest thoughts with false enwind.

Life is a mockery if death
Have the least power men say it hath. 
As to a hound that mewing waits,
Death opens, and shuts to, his gates;
Else even dry bones might rise and say,—­
“’Tis ye are dead and laid away.”

Innocent children out of nought
Build up a universe of thought,
And out of silence fashion Heaven: 
So, dear, is this poor dying even,
Seeing thou shall be touched, heard, seen,
Better than when dust stood between.

FOREBODING

Thou canst not see him standing by—­
Time—­with a poppied hand
Stealing thy youth’s simplicity,
Even as falls unceasingly
    His waning sand.

He will pluck thy childish roses, as
    Summer from her bush
Strips all the loveliness that was;
Even to the silence evening has
    Thy laughter hush.

Thy locks too faint for earthly gold,
    The meekness of thine eyes,
He will darken and dim, and to his fold
Drive, ’gainst the night, thy stainless, old
    Innocencies;

Thy simple words confuse and mar,
    Thy tenderest thoughts delude,
Draw a long cloud athwart thy star,
Still with loud timbrels heaven’s far
    Faint interlude.

Thou canst not see; I see, dearest;
    O, then, yet patient be,
Though love refuse thy heart all rest,
Though even love wax angry, lest
    Love should lose thee?

VAIN FINDING