"The wonder of its being born,
So lone and lovely—even as you—
Half maiden-moon, half maiden-morn,
And delicately sad with dew;
How came it in this rocky place?
Or shall I ask the rose if she
Knows how this marvel of your face
On this harsh planet came to be?"
Earth's bluest eyes gazed into mine,
And on her head Earth's brightest gold
Made all the rocks with glory shine—
But still the secret went untold;
For rose nor girl, no more than I,
Their own mysterious meaning knew,
Save that alike from earth and sky
Each her enchanted being drew.
Both from deep wells of wonder sprang,
Both children of the cosmic dream,
Alike with yonder bird that sang,
And little lives that flit and gleam;
Sparks from the central rose of fire
That at the heart of being burns,
That draws the lily from the mire
And trodden dust to beauty turns.
Strange wand of Beauty—that transforms
Old dross to dreams, that softly glows
On the fierce rainbowed front of storms,
And smiles on unascended snows,
That from the travail of lone seas
Wrests sighing shell and moonlit pearl,
And gathers up all sorceries
In the white being of one girl.
AS IN THE WOODLAND I WALK
As in the woodland I walk, many a strange thing I learn—
How from the dross and the drift the beautiful things return,
And the fires quenched in October in April reburn;
How foulness grows fair with the stern lustration
of sleets and snows,
And rottenness changes back to the breath and the cheek
of the rose,
And how gentle the wind that seems wild to each blossom
that blows;
How the lost is ever found, and the darkness the door
of the light,
And how soft the caress of the hand that to shape
must not fear to smite,
And how the dim pearl of the moon is drawn from the gulf
of the night;
How, when the great tree falls, with its empire
of rustling leaves,
The earth with a thousand hands its sunlit ruin receives,
And out of the wreck of its glory each secret artist weaves
Splendours anew and arabesques and tints on his swaying loom,
Soft as the eyes of April, and black as the brows of doom,
And the fires give back in blue-eyed flowers the woodland
they consume;