MIST
Its hand compassionate guards our restless sight
Against how many a harshness, many an ill!
Tender as sleep, its shadowy palms distil
Weird vapours that ensnare our eyes with light.
Rash eyes, kept ignorant in their own despite,
It lets not see the unsightliness they will,
But paints each scanty fairness fairer still,
And still deludes us to our own delight.
It fades, regathers, never quite dissolves.
And, ah! that life, ah! that the heart and brain
Might keep their mist and glamour, not to know
So soon the disenchantment and the pain!
But one by one our dear illusions go,
Stript and cast forth as time’s slow wheel revolves.
MOONLIGHT
The fifers of these amethystine fields,
Whose far fine sound the night makes musical,
Now while thou wak’st and longing would’st recall
Joys that no rapture of remembrance yields,
Voice to thy soul, lone-sitting deep within
The still recesses of thine ecstasy,
My love and my desire, that fain would fly
With this far-silvering moon and fold thee in.
But not for us the touch, the clasp, the kiss,
And for our restlessness no rest. In vain
These aching lips, these hungering hearts that strain
Toward the denied fruition of our bliss,
Had love not learned of longing to devise
Out of desire and dream our paradise.
O SOLITARY OF THE AUSTERE SKY
O solitary of the austere sky,
Pale presence of the unextinguished star,
That from thy station where the spheres wheel by,
And quietudes of infinite patience are,
Watchest this wet, grey-visaged world emerge,—
Cold pinnacle on pinnacle, and deep
On deep of ancient wood and wandering surge,—
Out of the silence and the mists of sleep;
How small am I in thine august regard!
Invisible,—and yet I know my worth!
When comes the hour to break this ’prisoning shard,
And reunite with Him that breathed me forth,
Then shall this atom of the Eternal Soul
Encompass thee in its benign control!