go out to places that he knew,
To his child-home in the sun,
To the fields of his regret,
To one place i’ the innocent March air,
By one olive, and invent
The familiar form and scent
Safely; a white violet
Certainly is there.

Soeur Monique, remember me.
’Tis not in the past alone
I am picturing you to be;
But my little friend, my own,
In my moment, pray for me.
For another dream is mine,
And another dream is true,
      Sweeter even,
Of the little ones that shine
Lost within the light divine,—
Of some meekest flower, or you,
      In the fields of Heaven.

IN EARLY SPRING

O Spring, I know thee!  Seek for sweet surprise
   In the young children’s eyes.
But I have learnt the years, and know the yet
   Leaf-folded violet.
Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell
   The cuckoo’s fitful bell.
I wander in a grey time that encloses
   June and the wild hedge-roses.
A year’s procession of the flowers doth pass
   My feet, along the grass.
And all you sweet birds silent yet, I know
   The notes that stir you so,
Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear
   Beginnings of the year.
In these young days you meditate your part;
   I have it all by heart.

I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers
   Hidden and warm with showers,
And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall
   Alter his interval.
But not a flower or song I ponder is
   My own, but memory’s.
I shall be silent in those days desired
   Before a world inspired.
O dear brown birds, compose your old song-phrases
   Earth, thy familiar daisies.

The poet mused upon the dusky height,
   Between two stars towards night,
His purpose in his heart.  I watched, a space,
   The meaning of his face:
There was the secret, fled from earth and skies,
   Hid in his grey young eyes.
My heart and all the Summer wait his choice,
   And wonder for his voice.
Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire
   But to divine his lyre?
Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries,
   But he is lord of his.

PARTED

Farewell to one now silenced quite,
Sent out of hearing, out of sight,—
   My friend of friends, whom I shall miss.
   He is not banished, though, for this,—
Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight.

Though I shall walk with him no more,
A low voice sounds upon the shore.
   He must not watch my resting-place
   But who shall drive a mournful face
From the sad winds about my door?

I shall not hear his voice complain,
But who shall stop the patient rain?
   His tears must not disturb my heart,
   But who shall change the years, and part
The world from every thought of pain?

Although my life is left so dim,
The morning crowns the mountain-rim;
   Joy is not gone from summer skies,
   Nor innocence from children’s eyes,
And all these things are part of him.

He is not banished, for the showers
Yet wake this green warm earth of ours.
   How can the summer but be sweet?
   I shall not have him at my feet,
And yet my feet are on the flowers.

REGRETS

As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour
   Out by the low sand spaces,
The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore
   With lingering embraces,—

So in the tide of life that carries me
   From where thy true heart dwells,
Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee
   With lessening farewells;

Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets;
   A care half lost in cares;
The saddest of my verses; dim regrets;
   Thy name among my prayers.

I would the day might come, so waited for,
   So patiently besought,
When I, returning, should fill up once more
   Thy desolated thought;

And fill thy loneliness that lies apart
   In still, persistent pain.
Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart,
   As the tide comes again,

And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets
   Seaweeds afloat, and fills
The silent pools, rivers and rivulets
   Among the inland hills?

SONG

My Fair, no beauty of thine will last
   Save in my love’s eternity.
   Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully,
Are lost for ever—their moment past—
   Except the few thou givest to me.

Thy sweet words vanish day by day,
   As all breath of mortality;
   Thy laughter, done, must cease to be,
And all thy dear tones pass away,
   Except the few that sing to me.

Hide then within my heart, oh, hide
   All thou art loth should go from thee.
   Be kinder to thyself and me.
My cupful from this river’s tide
   Shall never reach the long sad sea.

SONNET—IN FEBRUARY

Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn,
   Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers,
   And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers.
A poet’s face asleep is this grey morn.

Now in the midst of the old world forlorn
   A mystic child is set in these still hours.
   I keep this time, even before the flowers,
Sacred to all the young and the unborn;

To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat,
   And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal,
      And to the future of my own young art,

And, among all these things, to you, my sweet,
   My friend, to your calm face and the immortal
      Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart.

SAN LORENZO GIUSTINIANI’S MOTHER

I had not seen my son’s dear face
(He chose the cloister by God’s grace)
   Since it had come to full flower-time.
   I hardly guessed at its perfect prime,
That folded flower of his dear face.

Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears
When on a day in many years
   One of his Order came.  I thrilled,
   Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled.
I doubted, for my mists of tears.

His blessing be with me for ever!
My hope and doubt were hard to sever.
   —That altered face, those holy weeds.
   I filled his wallet and kissed his beads,
And lost his echoing feet for ever.

If to my son my alms were given
I know not, and I wait for Heaven.
   He did not plead for child of mine,
   But for another Child divine,
And unto Him it was surely given.

There is One alone who cannot change;
Dreams are we, shadows, visions strange;
   And all I give is given to One.
   I might mistake my dearest son,
But never the Son who cannot change.

SONNET—THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,
   The poet trembles at his own long gaze
   That meets him through the changing nights and days
From out great Nature; all her waters quiver
With his fair image facing him for ever;
   The music that he listens to betrays
   His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways
His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.

His dreams are far among the silent hills;
   His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain
With winds at night; strange recognition thrills
   His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;
He knows his sweet mirth in the mountain rills,
   His weary tears that touch him with the rain.

TO A LOST MELODY

Thou art not dead, O sweet lost melody,
   Sung beyond memory,
When golden to the winds this world of ours
   Waved wild with boundless