For love’s sake I can put the art away,
       Or anything which stands ’twixt me and you. 
     But that strange essence God bestowed, I say,
       To permeate the work He gave to do: 
     And it cannot be drained, dissolved, or sent
     Through any channel save the one He meant.

     FRIENDSHIP AFTER LOVE.

     After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
          Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
          In the intensity of its own fires,
     There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days,
     Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze. 
          So after Love has led us, till he tires
          Of his own throes and torments and desires,
     Comes large-eyed friendship:  with a restful gaze
     He beckons us to follow, and across
          Cool, verdant vales we wander free from care. 
          Is it a touch of frost lies in the air? 
     Why are we haunted with a sense of loss? 
          We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
          And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

     [Illustration:]

     [Illustration:]

     QUERIES.

     Well, how has it been with you since we met
       That last strange time of a hundred times? 
     When we met to swear that we could forget—­
       I your caresses, and you my rhymes—­
     The rhyme of my lays that rang like a bell,
     And the rhyme of my heart with yours, as well?

     How has it been since we drank that last kiss,
       That was bitter with lees of the wasted wine,
     When the tattered remains of a threadbare bliss,
       And the worn-out shreds of a joy divine,
     With a year’s best dreams and hopes, were cast
     Into the rag-bag of the Past?

     Since Time, the rag-buyer, hurried away,
       With a chuckle of glee at a bargain made,
     Did you discover, like me, one day,
       That, hid in the folds of those garments frayed,
     Were priceless jewels and diadems—­
     The soul’s best treasures, the heart’s best gems?

     Have you, too, found that you could not supply
       The place of those jewels so rare and chaste? 
     Do all that you borrow or beg or buy
       Prove to be nothing but skilful paste? 
     Have you found pleasure, as I found art,
     Not all-sufficient to fill your heart?

     Do you sometimes sigh for the tattered shreds
       Of the old delight that we cast away,
     And find no worth in the silken threads
       Of newer fabrics we wear to-day? 
     Have you thought the bitter of that last kiss
     Better than sweets of a later bliss?

     What idle queries!—­or yes or no—­
       Whatever your answer, I understand
     That there is no pathway by which we can go
       Back to the dead past’s wonderland;
     And the gems he purchased from me, from you,
     There is no rebuying from Time, the Jew.