The dense, hard passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb

To the strait waste place that the years have rifled

Of all but the thorns that are touch'd not of Time.

The thorns he spares when the rose is taken;

The rocks are left when he wastes the plain.

Not a flower to be press'd of the foot that falls not;

As the heart of a dead man the seedplots are dry;

From the thicket of thorns whence the nightingale calls not,

Could she call, there were never a rose to reply.

Over the meadows that blossom and wither
Rings but the note of a sea-bird's song;
Only the sun and the rain come hither
All year long.

The sun burns sere and the rain dishevels One gaunt bleak blossom of scentless breath.

Only the wind here hovers and revels

In a round where life seems barren as death.

Here there was laughing of old, there was weeping,

Haply, of lovers none ever will know,
Whose eyes went seaward a hundred
sleeping
Years ago.

Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"

Did he whisper? "Look forth from the flowers to the sea;

For the foam-flowers endure when the roseblossoms wither,

And men that love lightly may die

but we?"

Or they lov'd their life through, and then went whither?

And were one to the end- but what end who knows?

Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither, As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the

rose.

Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?

What love was ever as deep as a grave?

shaken,

These remain.

them Or the wave.

Till the strength of the waves of the high

tides humble

The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink,

slain,

With fast-seal'd eyes,

And bade the dead rise up and live again, And she did rise:

through him :

But dark with strife,

Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds

bedim,

Was all his life.

Life and the clouds are vanish'd; hate and

fear

Have had their span

Of time to hurt and are not: He is here
The sunlike man.

City superb, that hadst Columbus first
For sovereign son,

Be prouder that thy breast hath later nurst
This mightier One.

Он, what shall be the burden of our rhyme,

And what shall be our ditty when the blossom's on the lime?

Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long:

We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song!

O lady of my summer and my spring, We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet throstle sing, And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet,

When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear fields are sweet.

We shall see the roses blowing in the

green,

The pink-lipp'd roses kissing in the golden summer sheen;

We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells of summer gold, And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the corn-crown'd wold.

The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain;

There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past betwixt us twain; But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together,

And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic weather.

SIBYL

THIS is the glamour of the world antique: The thyme-scents of Hymettus fill the air, And in the grass narcissus-cups are fair. The full brook wanders through the ferns to seek

The amber haunts of bees; and on the peak

Of the soft hill, against the gold-marged

sky,

She stands, a dream from out the days gone

by.

Entreat her not.

speak!

Indeed, she will not

Her eyes are full of dreams; and in her

Together of Love's wonder-wine :
We saw the golden days go by,
Unheeding, for we were divine;
Love had advanced us to the sky.

And of that time no traces bin,
Save the still shape that once did hold
My lover's soul, that shone therein,

As wine laughs in a vase of gold.

Cold, cold he lies, and answers not

Unto my speech; his mouth is cold Whose kiss to mine was sweet and hot As sunshine to a marigold.

And yet his pallid lips I press;

I fold his neck in my embrace; I rain down kisses none the less Upon his unresponsive face:

I call on him with all the fair

Flower-names that blossom out of love;

I knit sea-jewels in his hair;

I weave fair coronals above

The cold, sweet silver of his brow:
For this is all of him I have;

Nor any Future more than now

Shall give me back what Love once gave.

Among the thick star-diamonds, Where in the middle æther blaze

The Golden City's pearl gate-fronds ;

Sitteth, palm-crown'd and silver-shod, Where in strange dwellings of the skies The Christians to their Woman-God

Cease nevermore from psalmodies.

And I, I wait, with haggard eyes

And face grown awful for desire, The coming of that fierce day's rise When from the cities of the fire

The Wolf shall come with blazing crest, And many a giant arm'd for war; When from the sanguine-streaming West, Hell-flaming, speedeth Naglfar.

LOVE'S AUTUMN

Yes, love, the Spring shall come again, But not as once it came :

Once more in meadow and in lane

The daffodils shall flame,
The cowslips blow, but all in vain ;
Alike, yet not the same.

The roses that we pluck'd of old

Were dew'd with heart's delight;