THE SONGS OF SUMMER

The songs of summer are over and past! 
The swallow’s forsaken the dripping eaves;
Ruined and black ’mid the sodden leaves
The nests are rudely swung in the blast: 
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.

     The songs of summer are over and past! 
       Woe’s me for a music sweeter than theirs—­
       The quick, light bound of a step on the stairs,
     The greeting of lovers too sweet to last: 
       And ever the wind like a soul in pain
       Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.

A PARABLE

     Between the sandhills and the sea
       A narrow strip of silver sand,
       Whereon a little maid doth stand,
     Who picks up shells continually,
     Between the sandhills and the sea.

     Far as her wondering eyes can reach,
       A vastness heaving gray in gray
       To the frayed edges of the day
     Furls his red standard on the breach
     Between the sky-line and the beach.

     The waters of the flowing tide
       Cast up the sea-pink shells and weed;
       She toys with shells, and doth not heed
     The ocean, which on every side
     Is closing round her vast and wide.

     It creeps her way as if in play,
       Pink shells at her pink feet to cast;
       But now the wild waves hold her fast,
     And bear her off and melt away,
     A vastness heaving gray in gray.

     LOVE’S SOMNAMBULIST

     Like some wild sleeper who alone, at night
     Walks with unseeing eyes along a height,
       With death below and only stars above,
     I, in broad daylight, walk as if in sleep
     Along the edges of life’s perilous steep,
       The lost somnambulist of love.

     I, in broad day, go walking in a dream,
     Led on in safety by the starry gleam
       Of thy blue eyes that hold my heart in thrall;
     Let no one wake me rudely, lest one day,
     Startled to find how far I’ve gone astray,
       I dash my life out in my fall.

     THE MYSTIC’S VISION

     Ah!  I shall kill myself with dreams! 
       These dreams that softly lap me round
     Through trance-like hours, in which meseems
       That I am swallowed up and drowned;
     Drowned in your love, which flows o’er me
     As o’er the seaweed flows the sea.

     In watches of the middle night,
       ’Twixt vesper and ’twixt matin bell,
     With rigid arms and straining sight,
       I wait within my narrow cell;
     With muttered prayers, suspended will,
     I wait your advent—­statue-still.

     Across the convent garden walls
       The wind blows from the silver seas;
     Black shadow of the cypress falls
       Between the moon-meshed olive-trees;
     Sleep-walking from their golden bowers,
     Flit disembodied orange flowers.