I saw him steal the light away
That haunted in her eye:
It went so gently none could say
More than that it was there one day
And missing by-and-by.
I watched her longer, and he stole
Her lily tincts and rose;
All her young sprightliness of soul
Next fell beneath his cold control,
And disappeared like those.
I asked: “Why do you serve her so?
Do you, for some glad day,
Hoard these her sweets—?” He said, “O no,
They charm not me; I bid Time throw
Them carelessly away.”
Said I: “We call that cruelty—
We, your poor mortal kind.”
He mused. “The thought is new to me.
Forsooth, though I men’s master be,
Theirs is the teaching mind!”
TO SINCERITY
O sweet sincerity!—
Where modern methods be
What scope for thine and thee?
Life may be sad past saying,
Its greens for ever graying,
Its faiths to dust decaying;
And youth may have foreknown it,
And riper seasons shown it,
But custom cries: “Disown it:
“Say ye rejoice, though grieving,
Believe, while unbelieving,
Behold, without perceiving!”
—Yet, would men look at true things,
And unilluded view things,
And count to bear undue things,