Stripling, Man—the sod.
Might I talk little language to thee, pore
On thy last silence?  O thou city of God,
My waste lies after thee, and lies before.

TO O—, OF HER DARK EYES

Across what calm of tropic seas,
   ’Neath alien clusters of the nights,
Looked, in the past, such eyes as these?
   Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights!

The generations fostered them;
   And steadfast Nature, secretwise—
Thou seedling child of that old stem—
   Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes.

Was it a century or two
   This lovely darkness rose and set,
Occluded by grey eyes and blue,
   And Nature feigning to forget?

Some grandam gave a hint of it—
   So cherished was it in thy race,
So fine a treasure to transmit
   In its perfection to thy face.

Some father to some mother’s breast
   Entrusted it, unknowing.  Time
Implied, or made it manifest,
   Bequest of a forgotten clime.

Hereditary eyes!  But this
   Is single, singular, apart:—
New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss,
   New-made thy errand to my heart.

THE TREASURE

      Three times have I beheld
Fear leap in a babe’s face, and take his breath,
      Fear, like the fear of eld
That knows the price of life, the name of death.

      What is it justifies
This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue,
      The terror in those eyes
When only eyes can speak—they are so young?

      Not yet those eyes had wept.
What does fear cherish that it locks so well?
      What fortress is thus kept?
Of what is ignorant terror sentinel?

      And pain in the poor child,
Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb
      In the poor beast, and wild
In the old decorous man, caught, overcome?

      Of what the outposts these?
Of what the fighting guardians?  What demands
      That sense of menaces,
And then such flying feet, imploring hands?

Life: There’s nought else to seek;
Life only, little prized; but by design
      Of Nature prized.  How weak,
How sad, how brief!  O how divine, divine!

A WIND OF CLEAR WEATHER IN ENGLAND

O what a miracle wind is this
   Has crossed the English land to-day
With an unprecedented kiss,
   And wonderfully found a way!

Unsmirched incredibly and clean,
   Between the towns and factories,
Avoiding, has his long flight been,
   Bringing a sky like Sicily’s.

O fine escape, horizon pure
   As Rome’s!  Black chimneys left and right,
But not for him, the straight, the sure,
   His luminous day, his spacious night.

How keen his choice, how swift his feet!
   Narrow the way and hard to find!
This delicate stepper and discreet
   Walked not like any worldly wind.

Most like a man in man’s own day,
   One of the few, a perfect one:
His open earth—the single way;
   His narrow road—the open sun.

IN SLEEP