On the rim of the world is a rosy tower
Sky-poised above wide sea-foam,
Where a beautiful spirit waits hour by hour,
Far-eyed 'gainst a dawn like a phantom flower,
Till a ghostly lover comes home ...
Ah! love is as lust till it count love lost;
The soul is as sin till it weep sin's cost;
O, happy is he, though he suffer most,
Who wins to the Holy Ghost!
So spake old Ioläus. There
That drifting, chant-like monody,
Its eerie passion, weird despair,
Had wrought on me like wizardry;—
Withál he moved through strange eclipse
With God's faint finger at his lips,
And with such tense and far surprise,
That half uncanny seemed the man
With cloudy hair, in human guise,
So warped with age, so weirdly wan,
Whose dry flesh into spirit ran,
And saw with ghostly eyes.
THE RETURN
(To E.W.)
Home, O most pale adventurer, are you bound
From that strange kingdom where no love may trace
The life it loves to its abiding place,
Or hail it from afar with cheerful sound.
From deeps whose marges mortal ne'er hath found
You steal, and we are awed before your face—
For you are weird with wonder, with the grace
Of death's most delicate lilies are you crowned.
After the ranging sunset of Farewell—
When life's loved country fades, and hope is lorn,
Is it not fair from that dim, tideless bourn
To drift back home to man's own star and dwell
Fondly with time, in tune with bud and bell,
With midnight's shimmer of stars and the sheen of morn?