A mist of twilight rain
Hides now the orange edges of the day.
In vain, in vain
Wi10hou stay,
Beauty who wast, and shalt not be again!
STARS OF THE NOON
Untaught, I meet the question of the hours—
Travail and prayer and call;
But ye, with stillness deeper than the flow’rs’,
O stars! can answer all.
Now, tho’ the sapphire walls of noon forbid
Your beams compassionate,
Witheld by light, as love by silence hid,
Unchanging ye await,
Till Day, whom all the swords of sunset bar
From Edens daily lost,
Pass, and your lonely armies sink afar
To oceans nightly crost.
Ah! when, ere long, I watch your kingdoms reach
Past the departed sun,
Will ye, in silence holier than speech,
Tell that our ways are one?—
That I, as ye, vanish awhile in day
(The day we reckon night),
Till dusks of birth reveal the backward way
To darkness reckoned light?
Come! for the ancient Altar waits your flame,
The seas of shadow call,
And, exile of a land I cannot name,
Homesick, I question all.
THE APOTHECARY’S
Its red and emerald beacons from the night
Draw human moths in melancholy flight,
With beams whose gaudy glories point the way
To safety or destruction—choose who may!
Crystal and powder, oils or tincture clear,
Such the dim sight of man beholds, but here
Await, indisputable in their pow’r,
Great Presences, abiding each his hour;
And for a little price rash man attains
This council of the perils and the pains—
This parliament of death, and brotherhood
Omniponent for evil and for good.