By an echo that most sweetly woke,
I, long keyed to silence,
Knew she spoke.
By her nearness and the word she said,
I, who thought her living,
Knew her dead.
In an Autumn Garden
TO-NIGHT the air discloses
Souls of a million roses,
And ghosts of hyacinths that died too soon;
From Pan’s safe-hidden altar
Dim wraiths of incense falter
In waving spiral, making sweet the moon!
Aroused from fragrant covers,
The vows of vanished lovers
Take voice in whisperings that rise and pass;
Where the crisped leaves are lying
A tremulous, low sighing
Breathes like a startled spirit o’er the grass.
Ah, Love! in some far garden,
In Arcady or Arden,
We two were lovers! Hush—remember not
The years in which I’ve missed you—
’Twas yesterday I kissed you
Beneath this haunted moon! Have you forgot?
Rose Dolores
THE moan of Rose Dolores, she made her plaint to me,
“My hair is lifted by the wind that sweeps in from the sea;
I taste its salt upon my lips—O jailer, set me free!”
“Content thee, Rose Dolores; content thee, child of care!
There’s satin shoon upon thy feet and emeralds in thy hair,
And one there is who hungers for thy step upon the stair.”
The moan of Rose Dolores, “O jailer, set me free!
These satin shoon and green-lit gems are terrible to me;
I hear a murmur on the wind, the murmur of the sea!”