The Listeners | Page 4

of the may;
And with each stirring of the bough
Shadow beclouds
his childlike brow.
DREAMS
Be gentle, O hands of a child;
Be true: like a shadowy sea
In the

starry darkness of night
Are your eyes to me.
But words are shallow, and soon
Dreams fade that the heart once
knew;
And youth fades out in the mind,
In the dark eyes too.
What can a tired heart say,
Which the wise of the world have made
dumb?
Save to the lonely dreams of a child,
'Return again, come!'
FAITHLESS
The words you said grow faint;
The lamp you lit burns dim;
Yet,
still be near your faithless friend
To urge and counsel him.
Still with returning feet
To where life's shadows brood,
With
steadfast eyes made clear in death
Haunt his vague solitude.
So he, beguiled with earth,
Yet with its vain things vexed,
Keep
even to his own heart unknown
Your memory unperplexed.
THE SHADE
Darker than night; and oh, much darker, she,
Whose eyes in deep
night darkness gaze on me.
No stars surround her; yet the moon
seems hid
Afar somewhere, beneath that narrow lid.
She darkens
against the darkness; and her face
Only by adding thought to thought
I trace,
Limned shadowily: O dream, return once more
To gloomy
Hades and the whispering shore!
BE ANGRY NOW NO MORE
Be angry now no more!
If I have grieved thee--if
Thy kindness,
mine before,
No hope may now restore:
Only forgive, forgive!
If still resentment burns
In thy cold breast, oh if
No more to pity
turns,
No more, once tender, yearns
Thy love; oh yet forgive!...

Ask of the winter rain
June's withered rose again:
Ask grace of the
salt sea:
She will not answer thee.
God would ten times have
shriven
A heart so riven;
In her cold care thou'dst be
Still
unforgiven.
SPRING
Once when my life was young,
I, too, with Spring's bright face
By
mine, walked softly along,
Pace to his pace.
Then burned his crimson may,
Like a clear flame outspread,

Arching our happy way:
Then would he shed
Strangely from his wild face
Wonderful light on me--
Like hounds
that keen in chase
Their quarry see.
Oh, sorrow now to know
What shafts, what keenness cold
His are
to pierce me through,
Now that I'm old.
EXILE
Had the gods loved me I had lain
Where darnel is, and thorn,
And
the wild night-bird's nightlong strain
Trembles in boughs forlorn.
Nay, but they loved me not; and I
Must needs a stranger be,
Whose
every exiled day gone by
Aches with their memory.
WHERE?
Where is my love--
In silence and shadow she lies,
Under the
April-grey, calm waste of the skies;
And a bird above,
In the darkness tender and clear,
Keeps saying
over and over, Love lies here!
Not that she's dead;
Only her soul is flown
Out of its last pure

earthly mansion;
And cries instead
In the darkness, tender and clear,
Like the voice
of a bird in the leaves, Love--love lies here.
MUSIC UNHEARD
Sweet sounds, begone--
Whose music on my ear
Stirs foolish
discontent
Of lingering here;
When, if I crossed
The crystal verge
of death,
Him I should see
Who these sounds murmureth.
Sweet sounds, begone--
Ask not my heart to break
Its bond of
bravery for
Sweet quiet's sake;
Lure not my feet
To leave the path
they must
Tread on, unfaltering,
Till I sleep in dust.
Sweet sounds, begone:
Though silence brings apace
Deadly
disquiet
Of this homeless place;
And all I love
In beauty cries to
me,
'We but vain shadows
And reflections be.'
ALL THAT'S PAST
Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the briar's
boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are--

Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the
rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps
cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and
gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.
Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim Eden

By
Eve's nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the day gone
by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.
WHEN THE ROSE IS FADED

When the rose is faded,
Memory may still dwell on
Her beauty
shadowed,
And the sweet smell gone.
That vanishing loveliness,
That burdening breath
No bond of life
hath then
Nor grief of death.
'Tis the immortal thought
Whose passion still
Makes of the
changing
The unchangeable.
Oh, thus thy beauty,
Loveliest on earth to me,
Dark with no sorrow,
shines
And burns, with Thee.
SLEEP
Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is
deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to
sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;

Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:

Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have--a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light;

And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
THE STRANGER
Half-hidden in a graveyard,
In the blackness of a yew,
Where never
living creature stirs,
Nor sunbeam pierces through,
Is a tombstone green and crooked,
Its faded legend gone,
And but
one rain-worn cherub's head
To sing of the unknown.
There, when the dusk is falling,
Silence broods so deep
It seems

that every wind that breathes
Blows from the fields of sleep?
Day breaks in heedless beauty,
Kindling each drop