How can you comfort when fair youth dies,
When the spirit’s fain
For a purer gain,
Than the satisfied flesh supplies?

“But this I promise, when starved and cold
A lonely soul
Finds for its goal
A six-foot bed and churchyard mould.”

A MEADOW TRAGEDY

Here’s a meadow full of sunshine
Ripe grasses lush and high;
There’s a reaper on the roadway,
And a lark hangs in the sky.

There’s a nest of love enclosing
Three little beaks that cry;
The reapers in the meadow
And a lark hangs in the sky.

Here’s a mead all full of summer,
And tragedy goes by
With a knife amongst the grasses,
And a song up in the sky.

AN ECLIPSE

Let there be an end
And all be done;
Pass over, fair eclipse,
That hides the sun.

Dear face that shades the light
And shadows me,
Begone, and give me peace,
And set me free.

THE SCALLOP SHELL