Do the ranks of the Holy Ones
Know of her crime?
Does it loom in the mists

Of the birthplace of Time?
The stars, do they speak of her
Under their breath,
"Will this Wraith be forever.
Thus restless in death?"
On, through immensity,
Sliding and stealing,
On, through infinity,
Nothing revealing?

I see the fond lovers:

They walk in her light;
They charge the "soft maiden"
To bless their love-plight.
Does she laugh in her place,
As she glideth through space?

Does she laugh in her orbit with never a sound?

That to her, a dead body,

With nothing but rents in her round

Blighted and marred,

Wrinkled and scarred,

Barren and cold,

Wizened and old

That to her should be told,

That to her should be sung

The yearning and burning of them that are young?

THE RIDE TO THE LADY

"Now since mine even is come at last,
For I have been the sport of steel,
And hot life ebbeth from me fast,
And I in saddle roll and reel, —
Come bind me, bind me on my steed!
Of fingering leech I have no need!
The chaplain clasped his mailed knee.
"Nor need I more thy whine and thee !
No time is left my sins to tell;
But look ye bind me, bind me well!"
They bound him strong with leathern
thong,

For the ride to the lady should be long.

Day was dying; the poplars fled,
Thin as ghosts, on a sky blood-red;
Out of the sky the fierce hue fell,

Fast, and fast, and they plunged therein, — But the viewless rider rode to win.

Out of the wood to the highway's light Galloped the great-limbed steed in fright; The mail clashed cold, and the sad owl cried,

And the weight of the dead oppressed his side.

Fast, and fast, by the road he knew;
And slow, and slow, the stars withdrew;
And the waiting heaven turned weirdly
blue,

As a garment worn of a wizard grim.
He neighed at the gate in the morning
dim.

She heard no sound before her gate,

hell.

All his thoughts as a river flowed,

Flowed aflame as fleet he rode,
Onward flowed to her abode,

Ceased at her feet, mirrored her face.
(Viewless Death apace, apace,
Rode behind him in that race.)

"Face, mine own, mine alone,
Trembling lips my lips have known,
Birdlike stir of the dove-soft eyne
Under the kisses that make them mine!
Only of thee, of thee, my need!
Only to thee, to thee, I speed!”
The Cross flashed by at the highway's turn;
In a beam of the moon the Face shone
stern.

Far behind had the fight's din died;
The shuddering stars in the welkin wide
Crowded, crowded, to see him ride.
The beating hearts of the stars aloof
Kept time to the beat of the horse's hoof.
"What is the throb that thrills so sweet?
Heart of my lady, I feel it beat!"
But his own strong pulse the fainter fell,
Like the failing tongue of a hushing bell.
The flank of the great-limbed steed was wet
Not alone with the started sweat.

Fast, and fast, and the thick black wood Arched its cowl like a black friar's hood;

All was as her hand had left it late:
The needle slept on the broidered vine,
Where the hammer and spikes of the pas-
sion-flower

Her fashioning did wait.

On the couch lay something fair,
With steadfast lips and veiled eyne;
But the lady was not there.

On the wings of shrift and prayer,

Pure as winds that winnow snow,

Her soul had risen twelve hours ago.

The burdened steed at the barred gate

THISBE

THE garden within was shaded,

And guarded about from sight;

The fragrance flowed to the south wind,
The fountain leaped to the light.

And the street without was narrow,
And dusty, and hot, and mean;
But the bush that bore white roses,
She leaned to the fence between:

And softly she sought a crevice

In that barrier blank and tall, And shyly she thrust out through it Her loveliest bud of all.

And tender to touch, and gracious,

And pure as the moon's pure shine, The full rose paled and was perfect, For whose eyes, for whose lips, but mine!

THE CONTRAST

He loved her, having felt his love begin With that first look, as lover oft avers. He made pale flowers his pleading ministers,

Impressed sweet music, drew the springtime in

To serve his suit; but when he could not win,

Forgot her face and those gray eyes of hers; And at her name his pulse no longer stirs, And life goes on as though she had not been. She never loved him; but she loved Love So,

So reverenced Love, that all her being

shook

At his demand whose entrance she denied.

clean,

THE Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;

A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.

"Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,

But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming

up to scold them.

Vanity, oh, vanity!

Young maids, beware of vanity!"
Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
Half parson-like, half soldierly.

The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,

Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;

And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,

They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass.

All because the buff-coat Bee
Lectured them so solemnly: —
Vanity, oh, vanity!

66

Young maids, beware of vanity!"

FAIR ENGLAND

WHITE England shouldering from the sea, Green England in thy rainy veil,

Old island-nest of Liberty

And loveliest Song, all hail!

God guard thee long from scath and grief!

Not any wish of ours would mar
One richly glooming ivy-leaf,
One rosy daisy-star.

What! phantoms are we, spectre-thin,
Unfathered, out of nothing born?
Did Being in this world begin
With blaze of yestermorn?

Nay! sacred Life, a scarlet thread,

Through lost unnumbered lives has

run;

No strength can tear us from the dead;
The sire is in the son.

Nay through the years God's purpose glides,

And links in sequence deed with deed;
Hoar Time along his chaplet slides
Bead after jewel-bead.

O brother, breathing English air!
If both be just, if both be free,
A lordlier heritage we share
Than any earth can be:

If hearts be high, if hands be pure,
A bond unseen shall bind us still,
The only bond that can endure,

Being welded with God's will !

A bond unseen! and yet God speed
The apparent sign, when He finds good;
When in His sight it types indeed

That inward brotherhood.

For not the rose-and-emerald bow
Can bid the battling storm to cease,
But leaps at last, that all may know
The sign, not source, of peace.

Oh, what shall shameful peace avail,
If east or west, if there or here,
Men sprung of ancient England fail
To hold their birthright dear?

If west or east, if here or there,
Brute Mammon sit in Freedom's place,
And judge a wailing world's despair
With hard, averted face ?