And in her place has come another,
     With troubled smile and brooding eyes,
     Insatiate of sacrifice
And wholly, utterly your mother.

To Allen

Beauty, the dream that I have dreamed so much
Comes true in your quick smile,
And on your cheek I see her touch
And sometimes in your eyes a while
Immortal beauty’s fleeting image lies. 
Dear child, in whose veins beat
The marching centuries of lovers’ feet,
All those brave, ardent ghosts in you arise—­
The souls who, loving beauty, gave you birth,
With a chain of passion binding beauty to earth,
A captured dream—­these souls breathe with your breath
Living again in beauty that knows no death.

To Helen

Lie still in my arms, little four-years-old,
     Little bud that glows
With more beauty and passion than it can hold,
     Little flaming rose,

The spring’s red blossoms, when winter lies deep
     On a wind-swept world
Of tossing branches, lie safely asleep
     In brown buds curled.

They wake—­and the wind strips their petals away
     And spills them afar—­
Can I keep you from blooming, whatever I say,
     Wild bud that you are!

The Immortal

Child of a love denied, a dream unborn,
Spirit more brave
Than passion’s unfulfilment, wiser than fate—­
Nor breast nor grave
As cradle you have known,—­
I mourn
That my soul knows its own
Too late!

A soul’s half-breath,
Passion’s unremembered dream,
Perfume without a vase,
Intangible you seem
To life or death.

And when the coloured mantle of the days
Slips from my shoulders, and I lie
Forgetful, dumb,
Mingled with earth in passionless embrace,
Will you, forgotten as a bird,
Singing unheard
In space,
Will you not come
When every other dream is gone,
Bringing to that silent place
The shadow of a gesture flung
By motionless hands, a floating echo hung
From an unspoken word,
And to the empty sky
The sunset of a day which did not dawn
And cannot die !

To an Absent Child

I

At first in dreams
I pressed you so close
That you melted away on my breast,
But now I wait, breathless and motionless,
Till I feel your slender arms caress me
Like swallows blown against me
And quickly flown.

II

Small flower,
My body is the earth from which you sprang,
But we are more to each other than earth and flower,
Closer, even, than earth and flower,
For the sky in me is one with the sky in you...

My love for you
Is like sunlight shining in a quiet place,
You shall feel my love like soft light
Pouring about you.

III