“What home is yours now?” then I said;
   “You seem to have no care.” 
But the wild wavering tune went forth
   As if I had not been there.

“This world is dark, and where you are,”
   I said, “I cannot be!”
But still the happy one sang on,
   And had no heed of me.

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

One without looks in to-night
   Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
   As we sit and think
   By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
   Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
   Wondering, aglow,
   Fourfooted, tiptoe.

THE SELFSAME SONG

A bird bills the selfsame song,
With never a fault in its flow,
That we listened to here those long
   Long years ago.

A pleasing marvel is how
A strain of such rapturous rote
Should have gone on thus till now
   Unchanged in a note!

- But it’s not the selfsame bird. —
No:  perished to dust is he . . . 
As also are those who heard
   That song with me.

THE WANDERER

There is nobody on the road
   But I,
And no beseeming abode
   I can try
For shelter, so abroad
   I must lie.

The stars feel not far up,
   And to be
The lights by which I sup
   Glimmeringly,
Set out in a hollow cup
   Over me.

They wag as though they were
   Panting for joy
Where they shine, above all care,
   And annoy,
And demons of despair —
   Life’s alloy.

Sometimes outside the fence
   Feet swing past,
Clock-like, and then go hence,
   Till at last
There is a silence, dense,
   Deep, and vast.

A wanderer, witch-drawn
   To and fro,
To-morrow, at the dawn,
   On I go,
And where I rest anon
   Do not know!

Yet it’s meet—­this bed of hay
   And roofless plight;
For there’s a house of clay,
   My own, quite,
To roof me soon, all day
   And all night.

A WIFE COMES BACK

This is the story a man told me
   Of his life’s one day of dreamery.

   A woman came into his room
Between the dawn and the creeping day: 
She was the years-wed wife from whom
He had parted, and who lived far away,
      As if strangers they.

   He wondered, and as she stood
She put on youth in her look and air,
And more was he wonderstruck as he viewed
Her form and flesh bloom yet more fair
      While he watched her there;

   Till she freshed to the pink and brown
That were hers on the night when first they met,
When she was the charm of the idle town
And he the pick of the club-fire set . . . 
      His eyes grew wet,