A Jongleur Strayed | Page 9

morn.
Delight and Destiny and Death
Shall still the mortal story weave,

Man shall not lengthen out his breath,
Nor stay when it is time to
leave;
And all in vain for him to ask
His little meaning in the Whole,

Done well or ill his tiny task,
The mystic making of his soul.
Ah! love, and is it not enough
To have our part in this romance

Made of such planetary stuff,
Strange partners in the cosmic dance?

Though Life be all too swift a dream,
And its fair rose must fade
and fall,
Life has no sorrow in its scheme
As never to have lived at
all.
This fire that through our being runs,
When our two hearts together
beat,
Is one with yonder burning sun's,
Two atoms that in glory
meet;
What unimagined loss it were,

If that dread power in which
we trust
Had left your eyes, your lips, your hair,
Nought but
un-animated dust.

Unknown the thrilling touch divine
That sets our magic clay aflame,

That wrought your beauty to be mine,
And joy enough to speak
your name;
Thanks be to Life that did this thing,
Unsought, beloved,
for you and me,
Gave us the rose, and birds to sing,
The golden
earth, the blue-robed sea.
THE LOVELIEST FACE AND THE WILD ROSE
The loveliest face! I turned to her
Shut in 'mid savage rocks and
trees;--
'Twas in the May-time of the year,
And our two hearts were
filled with ease--
And pointed where a wild-rose grew,
Suddenly
fair in that grim place:
"We should know all, if we but knew

Whence came this flower, and whence--this face."
The loveliest face! My thoughts went around:
"Strange sister of this
little rose,
So softly 'scaped from underground;
O tell me if your
beauty knows,
Being itself so fair a thing,
How came this lovely
thing so fair,
How came it to such blossoming,
Leaning so strangely
from the air?
"The wonder of its being born,
So lone and lovely--even as you--

Half maiden-moon, half maiden-morn,
And delicately sad with dew;

How came it in this rocky place?
Or shall I ask the rose if she

Knows how this marvel of your face
On this harsh planet came to
be?"
Earth's bluest eyes gazed into mine,
And on her head Earth's brightest
gold
Made all the rocks with glory shine--
But still the secret went
untold;
For rose nor girl, no more than I,
Their own mysterious
meaning knew,
Save that alike from earth and sky
Each her
enchanted being drew.
Both from deep wells of wonder sprang,
Both children of the cosmic
dream,
Alike with yonder bird that sang,
And little lives that flit and
gleam;
Sparks from the central rose of fire
That at the heart of being

burns,
That draws the lily from the mire
And trodden dust to beauty
turns.
Strange wand of Beauty--that transforms
Old dross to dreams, that
softly glows
On the fierce rainbowed front of storms,
And smiles
on unascended snows,
That from the travail of lone seas
Wrests
sighing shell and moonlit pearl,
And gathers up all sorceries
In the
white being of one girl.
AS IN THE WOODLAND I WALK
As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn-- How from the
dross and the drift the beautiful things return, And the fires quenched in
October in April reburn;
How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration
of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and
the cheek
of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom
that blows;
How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door
of the light,
And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape
must not fear to smite,
And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn
from the gulf
of the night;
How, when the great tree falls, with its empire
of rustling leaves,
The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin
receives, And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves

Splendours anew and arabesques and tints on his swaying loom, Soft as
the eyes of April, and black as the brows of doom, And the fires give
back in blue-eyed flowers the woodland
they consume;
How when the streams run dry, the thunder calls on the hills, And the
clouds spout silver showers in the laps
of the little rills,
And each spring brims with the morning star,
and each thirsty fountain fills;
And how, when the songs seemed ended, and all the music mute, There
is always somewhere a secret tune, some string
of a hidden lute,
Lonely and undismayed that has faith in the flower
and the fruit.
So I learn in the woods--that all things come again,
That sorrow turns
to joy, and that laughter is born of pain, That the burning gold of June
is the gray of December's rain.
TO A MOUNTAIN SPRING
Strange little spring, by channels past our telling,
Gentle, resistless,
welling, welling, welling;
Through what blind ways, we know not
whence
You darkling come to dance and dimple--
Strange little
spring!
Nature hath no such innocence,
And no more secret thing--

So mysterious and so simple;
Earth hath no such fairy daughter

Of all her witchcraft shapes of