My soul bears arms too, but the scroll’s rolled tight,
Yet the one strip of faded brightness shown
Proclaims that when ’twas splendid in the light
Its blazon matched your own.
IN AGE
The wine of life was rough and new,
But sweet beyond belief,
And wrong was false, and right was true—
The rose was in the leaf.
In that good sunlight well we knew
The hues of wrong and right;
We slept among the roses through
The long enchanted night.
Now to our eyes, made dim with years,
Right intertwines with wrong.
How can we hear, with these tired ears,
The old, the magic song?
But this we know—wine once was red,
Roses were red and dear;
Once in our ears the truths were said
That now the young men hear!
WHITE MAGIC
This is the room to which she came,
And Spring itself came with her;
She stirred the fire of life to flame,
She called all music hither.
Her glance upon the lean white walls
Hung them with cloth of splendour,
And still the rose she dropped recalls
The graces that attend her.
The same poor room, so dull and bare
Before, in consecration,
She breathed upon its common air
The true transfiguration . . .?
This room the same to which she came
For one immortal minute?—
How can it ever be the same
Since she has once been in it!