Help me to mourn, and I shall love;
What grief is like to mine?
Crown me with thorn, the stars above
Shall in the circlet shine!
The Temple opens wide: none sees
The love, the dream, the light!
O, blind and finite, are not these
Blinding and infinite?
The veil, the veil is rent: the skies
Are white with wings of fire,
Where victim souls triumphant rise
In torment of desire.
Help me to seek: I would not find,
For when I find I know
I shall have clasped the hollow wind
And built a house of snow.
HAUNTED IN OLD JAPAN
Music of the star-shine shimmering o'er the sea
Mirror me no longer in the dusk of memory:
Dim and white the rose-leaves drift along the shore.
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
All along the purple creek, lit with silver foam,
Silent, silent voices, cry no more of home!
Soft beyond the cherry-trees, o'er the dim lagoon,
Dawns the crimson lantern of the large low moon.
We that loved in April, we that turned away
Laughing ere the wood-dove crooned across the May,
Watch the withered rose-leaves drift along the shore.
Wind among the roses, blow no more!
We the Sons of Reason, we that chose to bride
Knowledge, and rejected the Dream that we denied,
We that chose the Wisdom that triumphs for an hour,
We that let the young love perish like a flower....