this
Unique rejection of a kiss.
  

I guard for thee
This jealous sad monopoly.
I seal this honour thine.  None dare
Hope for a part in thy despair.

THE LADY POVERTY

The Lady Poverty was fair:
But she has lost her looks of late,
With change of times and change of air.
Ah slattern, she neglects her hair,
Her gown, her shoes.  She keeps no state
As once when her pure feet were bare.

Or—almost worse, if worse can be—
She scolds in parlours; dusts and trims,
Watches and counts.  Oh, is this she
Whom Francis met, whose step was free,
Who with Obedience carolled hymns,
In Umbria walked with Chastity?

Where is her ladyhood?  Not here,
Not among modern kinds of men;
But in the stony fields, where clear
Through the thin trees the skies appear;
In delicate spare soil and fen,
And slender landscape and austere.

THE FOLD

      Behold,
The time is now!  Bring back, bring back
Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim.
Oh lead them from the mountain-track—
      Thy frolic thoughts untold.
Oh bring them in—the fields grow dim—
      And let me be the fold.

      Behold,
The time is now!  Call in, O call
Thy posturing kisses gone astray
For scattered sweets.  Gather them all
      To shelter from the cold.
Throng them together, close and gay,
      And let me be the fold!

CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT

The child not yet is lulled to rest.
   Too young a nurse, the slender Night
So laxly holds him to her breast
   That throbs with flight.

He plays with her and will not sleep.
   For other playfellows she sighs;
An unmaternal fondness keep
   Her alien eyes.

THE ROARING FROST

A flock of winds came winging from the North,
Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth
   With a resounding call!

Where will they close their wings and cease their cries—
Between what warming seas and conquering skies—
   And fold, and fall?

PARENTAGE

“When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people.”

   Ah no, not these!
These, who were childless, are not they who gave
So many dead unto the journeying wave,
The helpless nurslings of the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.

But those who slay
Are fathers.  Theirs are armies.  Death is theirs,
The death of innocences and despairs;
The dying of the golden and the grey.
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.
And she who slays is she who bears, who bears.

THE MODERN MOTHER

   Oh what a kiss
With filial passion overcharged is this!
   To this misgiving breast
The child runs, as a