My splendors are menagerie;
  But their competeless show
Will entertain the centuries
  When I am, long ago,
An island in dishonored grass,
  Whom none but daisies know.

XXVIII.

The coming of night.

How the old mountains drip with sunset,
  And the brake of dun! 
How the hemlocks are tipped in tinsel
  By the wizard sun!

How the old steeples hand the scarlet,
  Till the ball is full, —­
Have I the lip of the flamingo
  That I dare to tell?

Then, how the fire ebbs like billows,
  Touching all the grass
With a departing, sapphire feature,
  As if a duchess pass!

How a small dusk crawls on the village
  Till the houses blot;
And the odd flambeaux no men carry
  Glimmer on the spot!

Now it is night in nest and kennel,
  And where was the wood,
Just a dome of abyss is nodding
  Into solitude! —­

These are the visions baffled Guido;
  Titian never told;
Domenichino dropped the pencil,
  Powerless to unfold.

XXIX.

Aftermath.

The murmuring of bees has ceased;
  But murmuring of some
Posterior, prophetic,
  Has simultaneous come, —­

The lower metres of the year,
  When nature’s laugh is done, —­
The Revelations of the book
  Whose Genesis is June.

IV.  TIME AND ETERNITY.

I.

This world is not conclusion;
  A sequel stands beyond,
Invisible, as music,
  But positive, as sound. 
It beckons and it baffles;
  Philosophies don’t know,
And through a riddle, at the last,
  Sagacity must go. 
To guess it puzzles scholars;
  To gain it, men have shown
Contempt of generations,
  And crucifixion known.

II.

We learn in the retreating
  How vast an one
Was recently among us. 
  A perished sun

Endears in the departure
  How doubly more
Than all the golden presence
  It was before!

III.

They say that ‘time assuages,’ —­
  Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
  As sinews do, with age.

Time is a test of trouble,
  But not a remedy. 
If such it prove, it prove too
  There was no malady.

IV.

We cover thee, sweet face. 
  Not that we tire of thee,
But that thyself fatigue of us;
  Remember, as thou flee,
We follow thee until
  Thou notice us no more,
And then, reluctant, turn away
  To con thee o’er and o’er,
And blame the scanty love
  We were content to show,
Augmented, sweet, a hundred fold
  If thou would’st take it now.