of the island night above
    Come by me, wandering, whispering, beseeching love;
    As in the twilight children gather close and press
    Nigh and more nigh with shadowy tenderness,
    Feeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps glide
    Seeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside. 
    O voices, I would go with you, with you, away,
    Facing once more the radiant gateways of the day;
    With you, with you, what memories arise, and nigh
    Trampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by,
    Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men
    Grow tender brothers and gay children once again;
    Fades every hate away before the Mother’s breast
    Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest.

A NEW BEING

    I know myself no more, my child,
    Since thou art come to me,
    Pity so tender and so wild
    Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee.

    These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,
    Are from the Mother shed,
    Where many a broken heart hath lain
    And many a weeping head.

THE MAN TO THE ANGEL

    I have wept a million tears: 
    Pure and proud one, where are thine,
    What the gain though all thy years
    In unbroken beauty shine?

    All your beauty cannot win
    Truth we learn in pain and sighs: 
    You can never enter in
    To the circle of the wise.

    They are but the slaves of light
    Who have never known the gloom,
    And between the dark and bright
    Willed in freedom their own doom.

    Think not in your pureness there,
    That our pain but follows sin: 
    There are fires for those who dare
    Seek the throne of might to win.

    Pure one, from your pride refrain: 
    Dark and lost amid the strife
    I am myriad years of pain
    Nearer to the fount of life.

    When defiance fierce is thrown
    At the God to whom you bow,
    Rest the lips of the Unknown
    Tenderest upon my brow.

ENDURANCE

    He bent above:  so still her breath
    What air she breathed he could not say,
    Whether in worlds of life or death: 
    So softly ebbed away, away
    The life that had been light to him,
    So fled her beauty leaving dim
    The emptying chambers of his heart
    Thrilled only by the pang and smart,
    The dull and throbbing agony
    That suffers still, yet knows not why. 
    Love’s immortality so blind
    Dreams that all things with it conjoined
    Must share with it immortal day: 
    But not of this—­but not of this—­
    The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
    Fall from it and it goes its way. 
    So blind he wept above her clay,