For viewed not of each other,
Yet closer side by side
Than child unto his mother,
Than husband to bride,
Thought unto thought you answered.
One prayer we seemed—one breath;
And the deep love between us
Was the love after death.
DEDICATION TO A FIRST BOOK
Braver than sea-going ships with the dawn in their sails,
Than the wind before dawn more healing and fragrant and free,
Fairer than sight of a city all white from the mountain-top viewed in
the vales,
Or the silver-bright flakes of the moonlight in lakes, when the moon
rides the clouds and the forest awakes,
You are to me!
For you are to me what the bowstring is to the shaft,
Speeding my purpose aloft and aflame and afar,
Through the thick of the fight, in your eyes' steady light my soul
hath seen splendor, and laughed.
Now, however I tend betwixt foeman and friend through the riddle of
Life to Death's light at the end,
I ride for your star!
THE SHADOWED ROAD
Our shadows moved before us on the road.
The trees that watched us brooded dark and still,
Streaked by the frost with phosphorescent gray.
Chill followed sharply on a gorgeous day
Of winds, blown leaves, red bonfires. Faintly showed
The mist-ringed moon above the pasture hill.
Our shadows moved before us. By our side
New mystery, throbbing through the rhythm of life
Echoed our footsteps; and its presence grew
So real to me, I felt its power endue
An archangelic shape, whose phantom stride
Rhymed with our own who walked as man and wife.
Light fell upon us from the glimmering moon,
And light upon his face whose name is Love.
Ah, the rapt eyes, the tender, quickening gaze,
The splendor on that wild immortal face!
Then hurrying cloud possessed the heavens, and soon
I saw his shadow darken from above.
Beyond our own it stretched along the way,
The darkness of Death's cowl, more deep than night.
Gulfing our own, it blotted out the road,
The shadow of Love that brightest dreams forebode.
Yet, in my soul I found a thing to say:
"Though darkness go before, we walk in light.
"This is Love's answer!" For Death's night must move
Onward before two hearts that cast out fear,
Joined by the closest of immortal bonds.
They shall speak truth when prayer to prayer responds,
"Death but precedes us as the shadow of Love.
Light falls about us from a surer sphere!"