THE GODS TOGETHER
Throneless, discrowned, and impotent,
In man's sad disillusionment,
We passed with Earth's returnless youth,
Who were the semblances of truth,
The veils that hid the vacantness
Infinite, naked, meaningless,
The blank and universal Sphinx
Each world beholds at last—and sinks.
New gods protect awhile the gaze
Of man—each one a veil that stays—
Till the new gods, discredited,
Like mist that melts with noon, are fled—
That power oppressive, limitless,
The tyranny of nothingness.
Our power is dead upon the earth
With the first dews and dawns of Time;
But in the far and younger clime
Of other worlds, it hath re-birth.
Yea, though we find not entrance here—
Astray like feathers on the wind,
To neither earth nor heaven consigned—
Fresh altars in a distant sphere
Are keen with fragrance, bright with fire,
New hearths to warm us from the night,
Till, banished thence, we pass in flight
While all the flames of dream expire.
A SUNSET
As blood from some enormous hurt
The sanguine sunset leapt;
Across it, like a dabbled skirt,
The hurrying tempest swept.
THE CLOUD-ISLANDS
What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset's tides of light—
Opals aglow in saffron seas?
How beautiful they lie, and bright,
Like some new-found Hesperides!
What varied, changing magic hues
Tint gorgeously each shore and hill!
What blazing, vivid golds and blues
Their seaward winding valleys fill!
What amethysts their peaks suffuse!
Close held by curving arms of land
That out within the ocean reach,
I mark a faery city stand,
Set high upon a sloping beach
That burns with fire of shimmering sand.