And night draws near, the sadly sweet—
A nun whose face is calm and fair—
And kneeling at the dead day's feet
Her soul goes up in silent prayer.
In prayer, we feel through dewy gleam
And flowery fragrance, and—above
All Earth—the ecstasy and dream
That haunt the mystic heart of love.
KNIGHT-ERRANT
Onward he gallops through enchanted gloom.
The spectres of the forest, dark and dim,
And shadows of vast death environ him—
Onward he spurs victorious over doom.
Before his eyes that love's far fires illume—
Where courage sits, impregnable and grim—
The form and features of her beauty swim,
Beckoning him on with looks that fears consume.
The thought of her distress, her lips to kiss,
Mails him with triple might; and so at last
To Lust's huge keep he comes; its giant wall,
Wild-towering, frowning from the precipice;
And through its gate, borne like a bugle blast,
O'er night and hell he thunders to his all.
THE END OF SUMMER
Pods are the poppies, and slim spires of pods
The hollyhocks; the balsam's pearly bredes
Of rose-stained snow are little sacs of seeds
Collapsing at a touch; the lote, that sods
The pond with green, has changed its flowers to rods
And discs of vesicles; and all the weeds,
Around the sleepy water and its reeds.
Are one white smoke of seeded silk that nods.
Summer is dead, ay me! sweet Summer's dead!
The sunset clouds have built her funeral pyre,
Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
Great golden melon—saying, "Fall has come."