Two gates—and one was morning’s, gold with gleams
Of sudden sunlight, and clear skies above
Ways where the air is musical with love,
And summer singing in a land of streams:
One sad with twilight and low sound that seems
Like the marred song-voice of a broken heart,
Where life and love sit evermore apart,
And look back longing to the gate of dreams.
Time was, I wandered in those sunlit lands,
And felt the glamour in my wakening eyes;
But now with sword aflame the angel stands,
Pointing the threshold of the gate of gloom;
While through the monotone of human cries,
Upsoars this pitiless, “fulfil thy doom!”
GETTATI AL VENTO.
I.
The sea swallows wheel and fly
To their homes in the grey cliff-side;
And the silent ships drift by,
The world and its ways are wide!
Oh, which of you wandering sails
Will carry a word from me?
Spread all your wings in the gales,
Fly fast to her northern sea!
Go say to my heart’s desired,
Too long from her side I roam,
And say I am tired, tired,
And I would she would call me home!
II.
I thought that I wandered, wandered,
All night till the dawn of day,
And I came to the house she dwells in,
A hundred miles away: