TO OUTER NATURE
Show thee as I thought thee
When I early sought thee,
Omen-scouting,
All undoubting
Love alone had wrought thee—
Wrought thee for my pleasure,
Planned thee as a measure
For expounding
And resounding
Glad things that men treasure.
O for but a moment
Of that old endowment—
Light to gaily
See thy daily
Irisèd embowment!
But such re-adorning
Time forbids with scorning—
Makes me see things
Cease to be things
They were in my morning.
Fad’st thou, glow-forsaken,
Darkness-overtaken!
Thy first sweetness,
Radiance, meetness,
None shall re-awaken.
Why not sempiternal
Thou and I? Our vernal
Brightness keeping,
Time outleaping;
Passed the hodiernal!
THOUGHTS OF PHENA
AT NEWS OF HER DEATH
Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
And in vain do I urge my unsight
To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days,
Sad, shining, or dim?
Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
With an aureate nimb?
Or did life-light decline from her years,
And mischances control
Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
Disennoble her soul?