There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded
Her soul is at war with the life she has led.
As I looked on that face so strangely faded
I wonder God did not strike me dead.
While I have been happy and gay and jolly,
Received by the very best people in town,
That girl whom I led in the way to folly,
Has gone on recklessly down and down.
* * * * *
Two o’clock, and no sleep has found me;
That face I saw in the street-lamp’s light
Peers everywhere out from the shadows around me—
I know how a murderer feels to-night.
ARISTARCHUS
(THE NAME OF THE MOUNTAIN IN THE MOON)
It was long and long ago our love began;
It is something all unmeasured by time’s span:
In an era and a spot, by the Modern World forgot,
We were lovers, ere God named us, Maid and Man.
Like the memory of music made by streams,
All the beauty of that other love life seems;
But I always thought it so, and at last I know, I know,
We were lovers in the Land of Silver Dreams.
When the moon was at the full, I found the place;
Out and out, across the seas of shining space,
On a quest that could not fail, I unfurled my memory’s sail
And cast anchor in the Bay of Love’s First Grace.
At the foot of Aristarchus lies this bay,
(Oh! the wonder of that mountain far away!)
And the Land of Silver Dreams all about it shines and gleams,
Where we loved before God fashioned night or day.
We were souls, in eerie bodies made of light;
We were winged, and we could speed from height to height;
And we built a nest called Hope, on the sheer Moon Mountain Slope,
Where we sat, and watched new worlds wheel into sight.