And in their band forsooth
Is one to set me free—
The one that touched my youth—
The one God gave to me.
She kindles the desire
Whereby the gods survive—
The white ideal fire
That keeps my soul alive.
Now at the wondrous hour,
She leaves her star supreme,
And comes in the night’s still power,
To touch me with a dream.
Sibyl of mystery
On roads beyond our ken,
Softly she comes to me,
And goes to God again.
The Valley
I know a valley in the summer hills,
Haunted by little winds and daffodils;
Faint footfalls and soft shadows pass at noon;
Noiseless, at night, the clouds assemble there;
And ghostly summits hang below the moon—
Dim visions lightly swung in silent air.
The Climb of Life
There’s a feel of all things flowing,
And no power of Earth can bind them;
There’s a sense of all things growing,
And through all their forms a-glowing
Of the shaping souls behind them.
And the break of beauty heightens
With the swiftening of the motion,
And the soul behind it lightens,
As a gleam of splendor whitens
From a running wave of ocean.
See the still hand of the Shaper,
Moving in the dusk of being:
Burns at first a misty taper,
Like the moon in veil of vapor,
When the rack of night is fleeing.