She leaned on a strong arm, and little feared
     Abandonment to help if heaved or sank
     Her heart at intervals while Love looked blank,
     Life rosier were she but less revered.

     An arm that never shook did not obscure
     Her woman’s intuition of the bliss —
     Their tempter’s moment o’er the black abyss,
     Across the narrow plank — he could abjure.

     Then came a day that clipped for him the thread,
     And their first touch of lips, as he lay cold,
     Was all of earthly in their love untold,
     Beyond all earthly known to them who wed.

     So has there come the gust at South-west flung
     By sudden volt on eves of freezing mist,
     When sister snowflake sister snowdrop kissed,
     And one passed out, and one the bell-head hung.

     Poem:  Song In The Songless

     They have no song, the sedges dry,
     And still they sing. 
     It is within my breast they sing,
     As I pass by. 
     Within my breast they touch a string,
     They wake a sigh. 
     There is but sound of sedges dry;
     In me they sing.

     Poem:  Union In Disseverance

     Sunset worn to its last vermilion he;
     She that star overhead in slow descent: 
     That white star with the front of angel she;
     He undone in his rays of glory spent

     Halo, fair as the bow-shot at his rise,
     He casts round her, and knows his hour of rest
     Incomplete, were the light for which he dies,
     Less like joy of the dove that wings to nest.

     Lustrous momently, near on earth she sinks;
     Life’s full throb over breathless and abased: 
     Yet stand they, though impalpable the links,
     One, more one than the bridally embraced.

     Poem:  The Burden Of Strength

     If that thou hast the gift of strength, then know
     Thy part is to uplift the trodden low;
     Else in a giant’s grasp until the end
     A hopeless wrestler shall thy soul contend.

     Poem:  The Main Regret

     [Written for the Charing Cross Album]

     I.

     Seen, too clear and historic within us, our sins of omission
     Frown when the Autumn days strike us all ruthlessly bare. 
     They of our mortal diseases find never healing physician;
     Errors they of the soul, past the one hope to repair.

     II.

     Sunshine might we have been unto seed under soil, or have scattered
     Seed to ascendant suns brighter than any that shone. 
     Even the limp-legged beggar a sick desperado has flattered
     Back to a half-sloughed life cheered by the mere human tone.

     Poem:  Alternation

     Between the fountain and the rill
     I passed, and saw the mighty will
     To leap at sky; the careless run,
     As earth would lead her little son.