To distil a few golden drops of song Through the gloom of this hour; To filter true emotions Through pa.s.sion's burning fire When the sun bubble-like fades in the west; As our being craves for night's rest That pool of silver in life's forest of distress.

To light some pale candles In the cavern of a lonely isle And draw the wine of day From the must of midnight, Or plant a star-seed in the gray-ploughed eve-- So out of the abyss of the blackness of night Dawn's million-colored fountain might spring.

39

WANDERER

The silvery beach, a riband around the flowing hair of the sea, Where gleam the foam-flowers garlanded in mult.i.tudinous nebulous rings: Here, on the frontier of many worlds and the billow-rocked cradle of eternal sleep, No sound, no music, no silence that a wounded soul can heal.

A longing more tempestuous than the craven breeze-possessed deep, And tears that outweigh the salt of the woeful brine, Yet no sleep dream-robbed, or dream-laden, nor even death's pallid peace; But a ceaseless crying over my heart's forsaken valleys Where love like a wraith haunts the empty tombs of memory.

40

AT DAWN

With the breath of dawn Cooling thy feverish brow, And the fading of the last footfall of the stars No kiss can I bring to thy bedside, Nor caresses of cooling fire, my sweet.

Yet through this dreamful silence That writes on the rim of the golden light The story of our love With most eloquent poignancy, More love we pour into each other Than the tryst of an eternal night.

41

From her many-colored bow Nature Has hurled her silver arrows of rain And slain the hosts of Dark.

Jeweled with a single star, the Moon Walks the garden of Night; Higher and higher Through the star-enflowered pathways of sapphire She draws her train of silver.

42

If words fail, song will come; If thought fades, souls will not be dumb; If sound ceases, Silence our song; If Life fails,--Death join our hands.

43

RAINY NIGHT

Like tears shed over a dream, Like sighs that stream In an unseen nameless way Into the heart of our lay.

It seemed hour on hours, Years like fading flowers Scattered their petals and bloom In a half-lit forest of gloom.

The softness of its sounds, Like the coursing of a million hounds Of dream over the glade of sleep Where tortured silences creep.

Exquisite, pain-laden, peaceful, This night most beautiful, What love forsaken by loving Sets his heart a'singing?

No torment in it, but tenderness; A liquid star-music of sadness Pours into my soul half asleep; While the willows at my window weep.

44

GHOSTS

Flames flickered in the fireplace, As memories on the hearth of life; Two shadows we, watching, brooding, To catch our reflection In a non-existent stream.

The ghost-witness of it all, The clock brings its proofs; Moments melt into moments, Like notes of sad music, Like a white cerement.

Cold memories shroud our life; Speech flees before this; Faces turn away from each other; The fire throws light on them; There, too, flames burn and flicker.

45

RAIN

What world-agony distils its poignancy this day?

What pain-laden heart pours out its exhaustless lay Of tormenting woe and tortured silences?

From the far reaches of the marshland Along and beyond the crescent-bed of the sea-sand What tempest on the wave's-strings makes its cadences?

The distant hills dimmed like dull and forgotten dreams Raise their shadowy heads where pour in streams The tears of the heart-hollowed mourners of the skies;

While into the turgid heart of the fens at their feet Turbidly fall and dance sheet upon sheet To the measureless measure of the wind's empty sighs.

No light but a dismal gray, that neither throbs nor quivers On the torn banks of the heavens' cloud-rivers, But stonily stands still, like death that dies never.

Not-dead, but a weeping world bathing its corpses-- Its memories, its lost hopes, in regret's hea.r.s.es To be buried in flowerless graves, without incense or prayer.

It writhes in agony, rolls out in undulating rills, This rain-melody from the sea-waves to the farthest hills, Thence to the dreary distance lost to hearing or sight.