By Still Waters | Page 5

hearts unseeing
Point all their passionate love
in vain,
And blinded in the joy of being,
Meet only when pain
touches pain.
BROTHERHOOD
Twilight, a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the
radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reïmage heaven
within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange
perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,

Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an
eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietide.

Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul, And out of
slumber waking starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod
and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures
flit,
That through the long leagues of the island night above Come by
me, wandering, whispering, beseeching love;
As in the twilight
children gather close and press
Nigh and more nigh with shadowy
tenderness,
Feeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps
glide Seeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside.
O voices, I
would go with you, with you, away,
Facing once more the radiant
gateways of the day;
With you, with you, what memories arise, and
nigh
Trampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by,
Dread
deities, the giant powers that warred on men
Grow tender brothers
and gay children once again;
Fades every hate away before the
Mother's breast
Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest.

A NEW BEING
I know myself no more, my child,
Since thou art come to me,
Pity
so tender and so wild
Hath wrapped my thoughts of thee.
These thoughts, a fiery gentle rain,
Are from the Mother shed,

Where many a broken heart hath lain
And many a weeping head.
THE MAN TO THE ANGEL
I have wept a million tears:
Pure and proud one, where are thine,

What the gain though all thy years
In unbroken beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win
Truth we learn in pain and sighs:
You
can never enter in
To the circle of the wise.
They are but the slaves of light
Who have never known the gloom,

And between the dark and bright
Willed in freedom their own doom.
Think not in your pureness there,
That our pain but follows sin:

There are fires for those who dare
Seek the throne of might to win.
Pure one, from your pride refrain:
Dark and lost amid the strife
I am
myriad years of pain
Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown
At the God to whom you bow,
Rest
the lips of the Unknown
Tenderest upon my brow.
ENDURANCE
He bent above: so still her breath
What air she breathed he could not
say,
Whether in worlds of life or death:
So softly ebbed away, away

The life that had been light to him,
So fled her beauty leaving dim

The emptying chambers of his heart
Thrilled only by the pang and
smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows
not why.
Love's immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it

conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this--but not
of this--
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it
goes its way.
So blind he wept above her clay,
'I did not think that
you could die.
Only some veil would cover you
Our loving eyes
could still pierce through;
And see through dusky shadows still

Move as of old your wild sweet will,
Impatient every heart to win

And flash its heavenly radiance in.'
Though all the worlds were sunk
in rest
The ruddy star within his breast
Would croon its tale of
ancient pain,
Its sorrow that would never wane,
Its memory of the
days of yore
Moulded in beauty evermore.
Ah, immortality so blind,

To dream all things with it conjoined
Must follow it from star to
star
And share with it immortal years.
The memory, yearning, grief,
and tears,
Fall from it and it goes afar.
He walked at night along the
sands,
And saw the stars dance overhead,
He had no memory of the
dead,
But lifted up exultant hands
To hail the future like a boy,

The myriad paths his feet might press.
Unhaunted by old tenderness

He felt an inner secret joy!
A spirit of unfettered will
Through
light and darkness moving still
Within the All to find its own,
To be
immortal and alone.
THE VESTURE OF THE SOUL
I pitied one whose tattered dress
Was patched, and stained with dust
and rain;
He smiled on me; I could not guess
The viewless spirit's
wide domain.
He said, 'The royal robe I wear
Trails all along the fields of light:

Its silent blue and silver bear
For gems the starry dust of night.'
'The breath of joy unceasingly
Waves to and fro its folds starlit,

And far beyond earth's misery
I live and breathe the joy of it.'
THE TWILIGHT OF EARTH
The wonder of the world is o'er:
The magic from the sea is gone:


There is no unimagined shore,
No islet yet to venture on.
The
Sacred Hazels' blooms are shed,
The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.
Oh, what is worth this lore of age
If time shall never bring us back

Our battle with the gods to wage
Reeling along the starry track.
The
battle rapture here goes by
In warring upon things that die.
Let be